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Tech News: 2020-32

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

Problems

• All queries to the Wikidata Query Service failed between 17:50 and 17:59 UTC on Thursday 23 July. Some queries failed during a longer period. [1]
• Interlanguage links were ordered incorrectly for the past few weeks. This problem was also mentioned in Tech News two weeks ago. The problem is now fixed. [2]
• There is a problem with the global preferences for the "Use Legacy Vector" option. Developers are working on fixing it. [3]
• A bug in the Wikibase extension had disabled the "move" and "create" types of protection in the main (Gallery) namespace on Wikimedia Commons. New protections could not be added, and existing protections were not enforced, allowing some page moves and page creations that should not have been possible. This has now been fixed. [4]

Changes later this week

• The video player will change to be simpler and more modern. This week, the current beta feature will become the video player for everyone on most non-Wikipedia wikis. The old player will be removed. [5]
• Users' global.js and global.css pages will now also be loaded on the mobile site. You can read documentation for how to avoid applying styles to the mobile skin. [6]
• In the MonoBook skin, the searchGoButton identifier is now searchButton. This may affect CSS and JS gadgets. Migration instructions can be found in T255953. This was previously mentioned in issue 27.
• Bot operators can use Pywikibot to regularly archive discussions. The behavior when the bot uses counter to prevent large archives was changed. [7]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from August 4. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from August 5. It will be on all wikis from August 6 (calendar).

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

15:43, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Snowball close of Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2020 July 28#Template:Soccerbase

Your WP:SNOW close of Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2020 July 28#Template:Soccerbase is not supported by policy and in my opinion a very poor quality decision and supervote. The course of a discussion of discussion which favours the Gambling Industry and a high exposure with WikiProject Football may well have a vote profile that favours those interested in the WikiProject Site and at extreme may even have been influenced by the Gambling companies themselves. Use of the word "clearly" is often an attempt to dominiate a discussion and !Supervote and failure to identify important points or alternatives in the summary that had come of out of discussions as could have been done by a more experienced closer. You are "clearly?" looking at the !votes and failing to recognise the nature of discussion profile where people hold back sometimes some interesting points towards the end of the discussion. As such I see your intervention as disruptive and ultimately a bigger waste of poeples time. Without giving any information that could lead to a WP:OUTING can you confirm you have no connection to the gambling industry? Thankyou. Djm-leighpark (talk) 22:44, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Djm-leighpark I have no connection to the gambling industry and stand by my close. I have performed hundreds of closes at TfD with this one being part of my normal rounds. I did not just count the votes here and considered if there is any reason to give any of the keep !votes less weight. I saw no indication of sock puppeting or canvassing here with most participants being well established users actively editing football related articles. I also considered the relevant guideline, WP:EL which I am very familiar with from many other TfDs. While ELNO#5 is a reasonable, policy backed, deletion rationale it was effectively refuted by people not considering that the primary purpose. It is also worth noting that ELUES#3 states (with non-applicable parts removed): Sites that contain neutral and accurate material that is relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject and cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article due to [...] amount of detail (such as professional athlete statistics[...]) [can normally be linked]. My close is not a supervote either with it reflecting the consensus reached in the discussion.

While I may have closed the discussion it does not mean that your proposal is doomed though, just that this TfD doesn't have a reasonable chance to succeed. I think opening a discussion at WT:FOOTY about whether other statistics sources should be preferred could be received more positively and perhaps with some more preparations a future TfD with a concrete plan for replacements could succeed; there are several templates that have had SNOW keeps but later been deleted. A final note about my decision to do this as a snow closure: I have long thought that we should be more comfortable closing discussions early, especially when they are likely to consume as much editor time as this one. Looking at page views it has been viewed over 1200 times in just 4 days which is many times more than a regular TfD log page receives indicating that literally hundreds of editors have read this discussion making it a significant time sink with only tiny benefits from letting the discussion stay open for a few more days. It may be reasonable to say that I put the bar for doing a snow close lower than many others would. --Trialpears (talk) 23:36, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Thankyou for taking time to explain your reasoning but the clear intent of this of this template to be used in External links is a major issue. While many !keep votes claimed use for sourcing the templates design goes against its use for citation, unlike Soccerway. No explanation was given as to why officai sites were not providing the required statistics. While you comments here are useful they are retrospective and not made in the summing up. You have seen one viewpoint of the discussion rather than taking a fully wholistic approach. While you claim many visitors were editors they have have in fact been Wikipedia Readers who would not normally participate in such a discussion, and as such visitors like have a pro-football and possibly gambling bias the decision to snow close early, especially as you know you have a propensity for so doing, was an incorrect one. While the suggestion to go to WP:FOOTY was seem approrpiate that is likely a baised venue, WP:DRV is probably more neutral given your intervention here. The result may perhaps ought to have been the Soccerbase and Soccerway should be improved to allow and encourage their better uses as sources rather than internal links, but your !supervoting and failure to summarise neutrally had terminated that discussion. Thankyou.Djm-leighpark (talk) 00:16, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) You can obviously go the WP:CLOSECHALLENGE route, and generally I may even agree with you that this template is problematic, but I don't see how you can expect Trialpears to have closed it any other way, and DRV will likely endorse that. Even no consensus would've been a stretch. You can't expect them to somehow turn a flurry of keep rationales into a delete based on your nom. The indication that he's related to the gambling industry due to this close is just silly. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 00:51, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

@ProcrastinatingReader: I object to silly. It is a question appropriate to be asked and while that is the expected response and I'd be extremely disappointed that it wasn't the sheer scale of use of this template whoul be an SEO adviser dream without any brown envelops being used whatsoever. The problem with Trialpears close was it was early and failure to cover all appropriate points in the summary and a guidance as the way forward.Djm-leighpark (talk) 02:15, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Djm-leighpark, I do not have much to add here as I've already explained my close. If you believe WT:FOOTY will be biased you could always advertise the discussion elsewhere. DRV is definitely not the right venue for continued discussion since DRV is only concerned with whether my close was appropriate or not. The most favorable outcome DRV could reasonably reach would be relisting the discussion, but since there is no indication a large amount of editors would support the proposal after a relist it would almost certainly be kept anyway. You can always nominate it for deletion again in a couple of months if you want. I will reiterate though that it definitely wasn't a supervote according to the normal definition of it being "a close that reflects the preference of the closer, rather than according to the content of the discussion". I believe we both can agree that my consensus determination was sound, the only dispute being whether it was snowing. --Trialpears (talk) 00:52, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

@Trialpears: To state the obvious DRV is not the right venue for you as the snow was certainly questionable. Interpolation is easy and extrapolation is difficult. The fact that the template's documentation encourges, nay virtually mandates, its use as an external link whilst not facilititating its use of a source is a key part of the argument and was not addreessed by the keepers. The tone of the close of close was someehat different to the tone of your response on the talk page. Its 3am in the morning at present in my currently disrupted RL on the settee at the moment and I'll review my precise details details in the morning or somewhat but a DRV is extremely likely and I think you need to be very very very careful about disruptive snows. Experienced editors will so often wait towards the end of the 168 hour period. On your initial response on the talk page you noted the nom. was reasonable, that wa not my impression from the stating of the summary but I need to re-read that in the light of day. If there is a discrepency in tone that is an issue. Thankyou.Djm-leighpark (talk) 02:15, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Djm-leighpark, There is nothing weird about having another tone when going into the details of why I believe the close was appropriate than when making a short statement about something I believed wouldn't get any pushback. Participants in the discussion are aware that the template is used for external links and have evaluated it on those merits with several people referencing WP:EL which wouldn't be the case if they believed it was used for citations. I don't think we have anything more to discuss here. Take it to DRV if you really want to, but as I've said before discussing alternative sources for player statistics seems much more likely to lead to a successful change than having a week long debate about whether to maybe reopen a discussion that is exceedingly unlikely to reach a consensus for deletion. --Trialpears (talk) 08:40, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Trialpears: We think very differently, any while probable DRV results are endorse with an outside relist it might also come with a recommendation for say equalisation of the say Soccerway and Soccerbase templates as was raised earlier in the discussion and to which I pointed out an interesting albeit not perfect use-case. I will take your advice to mull any DRV but please be aware that is a high possibility I will move this forward at some point. I remained opined and annoyed your intervention in the TfD was not to policy and inappropriate and unwarrented. Thankyou.10:19, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Djm-leighpark Modifying the template can be done by discussion at the talk page and does not require a TfD. It is unlikely that DRV would come with such a recommendation since the purpose of DRV is to assess the merits of the close and not to be a TfD round 2. If you take this to DRV please leave a note here since I'm not watching DRV. --Trialpears (talk) 13:48, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Trialpears: I agree the purpose of the DRV is to discuss the administration of the DRV with particular emphasis on the close; though sometimes it may be used for example to re-evaluate a draft for re-entry to possibly salted mainspace. And the appropriateness of your snow close might be evaluated there, the quality, balance and possible bias of your close reasoning and decision. Some might comment on the spaminess of site and how it generally sets bad precedences on what is allowed. I will certainly be refraining more from rebuking excess external links as a result of this decision. Improvements or other to these protected templates to the benefit of the gambling industry are of course may be independently initiated independently of any DRV as my contributions may validate. I am minded the gambling industry should probably commend you for your closure. Thankyou. Djm-leighpark (talk) 16:21, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks

		The NBA WikiProject Barnstar
		Thanks for initiating the basketballstats merge discussions and carrying out the changes. Great idea, as I don't think the holding cell option existed in the earlier discussions.—Bagumba (talk) 12:19, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Bagumba It was my pleasure! Feel free to ping me if you want some help with other template changes in the future! --Trialpears (talk) 16:21, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Usertalkpage ‎

Your close of Template:Usertalkpage didn't tag it as being merged or added it to the holding cell. --Gonnym (talk) 10:56, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Gonnym, huh, guess I missed that. I've implemented the merge with your sandbox version. Thanks for the reminder! --Trialpears (talk) 14:11, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Actually, this is the specific case I had in mind that got me wondering If you decide to close a discussion, do you have to implement it? Cheers, CapnZapp (talk) 20:05, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-33

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

Recent changes

• FileImporter and FileExporter became standard features on all Wikis during the first week of August. They help you transfer files from local wikis to Wikimedia Commons with the original file information and history intact. [8]

Problems

• The mobile skin displays a message at the bottom of the page about who edited last. This message showed raw wikitext. This has now been fixed. Some messages in Structured Discussions and content translation may still appear as raw wikitext. Developers are working on it. [9]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 1. This is planned between 13:30 and 15:30 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis in the coming weeks. [10][11]

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

16:06, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

Mass tagging question

Hey, when you tagged all the language icon templates, did you have a bot for that? If so, could you help me out and tag all the templates at Index of ISO 639 name templates for me? --Gonnym (talk) 11:45, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Gonnym, just good old AWB. The only thing that comes to mind in terms of bots is DannyS712 bot 13, but that is CfD only so that's no good. We really should have one though and since it's such a trivial task, just generate a list and prepend the tag, I feel like speedy approval would be sensible. Perhaps Primefac knows something or could comment on the prospects of a speedy approval. If you don't feel like creating a bot account and all that I guess I could do it with PearBOT. --Trialpears (talk) 16:19, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

As far as I am aware there are no bots used for mass-tagging pages nominated at XFD, likely because such things are rarely done (i.e. there are bots who have done the task, just none that have standing approval). With a list and a bot it's a trivial matter, Pear or Prime could easily do it as a one-off task. Obviously (speaking for the "listing at TFD" bit) these pages would all be listed on a subpage to avoid overwhelming the TFD nomination itself. Primefac (talk) 11:53, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Could either of you (@Primefac) help with your bots to tag the letter templates in Category:ISO 639 name from code templates and Category:ISO 639 name from code templates without a category? --Gonnym (talk) 12:42, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

Given that I seem to be the only active BAG at the moment it might be better to file the BRFA under PearBOT so I can approve it. Otherwise, who knows how long it will sit there. Primefac (talk) 13:04, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

BRFA filed at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/PearBOT II 9. --Trialpears (talk) 23:45, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

Approved. Primefac (talk) 23:04, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! Gonnym just make the nomination and I'll get tagging as soon as possible. --Trialpears (talk) 08:39, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Created the nomination at Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2020 August 14#Template:ISO 639 name aa by tagging Template:ISO 639 name aa (so you can remove that from the list). --Gonnym (talk) 09:39, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Gonnym, shouldn't these be noincluded since the TfD notice breaks all the wikilinks they are used in, which are most transclusions? --Trialpears (talk) 09:55, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

That's a good point, you are probably correct. --Gonnym (talk) 09:56, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Question

Please sir. Can you help me to show me how to add Charles Egbu on search engine optimization? Sadeeqzaria (talk) 18:28, 13 August 2020 (UTC)

Sadeeqzaria, the article doesn't show up in search engines because it hasn't been reviewed by a new page reviewer. I would review it myself if I could, but since I'm not a new page reviewer I can't help you. Just give it a few more days and it should get done. --Trialpears (talk) 08:46, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Ok thank you sir. Sadeeqzaria (talk) 09:47, 14 August 2020 (UTC)

Thank you very much sir for assisting me. I am a new contributor, I need to learn many things like submitting draft, uploading image with copy right tage and others please, what assistance can you do to me? Do you have WhatsApp group? Or video toturial? Sadeeqzaria (talk) 21:27, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Sadeeqzaria, my pleasure! I have a decent grasp of most areas of Wikipedia and should be able to give you some answer to most of your question, but you're probably better served by asking at the teahouse where there are lots of editors doing their best to help new contributors who likely know more than I do and can give you a faster answer. I don't believe there is a WhatsApp group for Wikipedia help, but there is a discord server and lots of IRC channels that fill a similar role. Happy editing! --Trialpears (talk) 20:20, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-34

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

Recent changes

• If you revert an edit using the undo link your edit is marked with an undo tag. This will now only happen if you don't change anything in the edit window before publishing the undo. This is to keep users from marking edits as undos when they actually do something else. [12]
• The new OOUI version will not work with Internet Explorer 8. This means the wikis will look strange and not work well in Internet Explorer 8. This was reported in Tech/News/2020/17. This is because keeping the wikis working with very old browsers creates other problems. [13]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 August. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 August. It will be on all wikis from 20 August (calendar).

Future changes

• All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 1. This is planned between 13:30 and 15:30 UTC. More information will be published in Tech News and will also be posted on individual wikis next week. This is a reminder. You can help by translating the announcement message. [14][15]

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

20:40, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-35

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

Changes later this week

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

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

17:59, 24 August 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-36

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

Problems

• This is a reminder. All wikis will be read-only for a few minutes on September 1. This is planned between 14:00 and 15:00 UTC. Please check on the details on the announcement message. [16][17]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

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

20:08, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Modify the Reign parameter

Hello, I have given the necessary explanations on the discussion page Template: infobox royalty, please checkArya.Go (talk) 00:17, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Arya.Go, I'm happy to implement changes if there is a consensus for them, but I'm not seeing one right now. Perhaps you could drop a note at WT:ROYAL and see what they think about your changes? --Trialpears (talk) 12:11, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-37

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

Changes later this week

• Normally pages can be moved to a title that has no existing page yet or to a page that has only one revision, which is a redirect to the page to be moved. A new user right allows editors to move pages over one-revision pages that redirect to anywhere. [18]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 September. It will be on all wikis from 10 September (calendar).
• All MediaWiki API modules will now use watchlist instead of watch. This was inconsistent before. [19]

Future changes

• The Wikipedia Android app team might work on patrolling tools in the future. You can let them know what tools would be useful for you or for less experienced patrollers. See the page on mediawiki.org.
• OTRS will be updated to a new version. This will probably take around two days. OTRS agents will not have access to the system during these days. Emails that come in during the update will be delivered when the update is done. The plan is to start around 08:00 UTC on 14 September. This could change. [20]
• The Wikipedia Android app will send push notifications if users want them. This could help you see for example when someone wrote on your talk page or your edit was reverted. This will need Google Play Services to work. It will also be possible to get the app without Google Play Services but push notifications will not work. Google Play Services is also used to make the app work for Android 4.4 users. [21][22]
• Wikimedia code review could move to GitLab. It would be hosted on Wikimedia servers. You can take part in the consultation.
• Dropdown menus in the Vector skin use a .menu class. This will not work in the future. Scripts can use nav ul instead. .vectorTabs and .vectorMenu will also not work. Some scripts need to be updated. You can read more in Phabricator.

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

15:59, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

DIAMM tempalte

Hi! You seem better versed in the technical side of Wikipedia than I so I was wondering if you could assist with this: I think a template for Medieval composers at the Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music, akin to Template:IMSLP would be beneficial, but I'm not sure how to do it myself. I suspect it would use the "people id" numbers in each url (e.g. 155 for Gherardello da Firenze). Any insight would be appreciated. Aza24 (talk) 21:16, 21 August 2020 (UTC)

Aza24, that looks both feasible to do and sensible to put in a template. I'm currently not home and have a quite a lot of IRL stuff going on right now, but I can probably create the template in a few days. --Trialpears (talk) 12:25, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

No rush! I'd appreciate anything thing you are able to come up with. Aza24 (talk) 02:25, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Aza24, after a long wait I've finally created it now at {{DIAMM}}. Supports composers and composition pages currently. Just ask me if you are missing any features and I will (hopefully more swiftly) help. --Trialpears (talk) 14:18, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

The template looks great! The only thing I noticed is that it seems to make a page break, like in the external links section of Josquin des Prez#External links but this may have been an input error on my part? Aza24 (talk) 19:35, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

Aza24,  Fixed forgot to remove some white space added for readability. --Trialpears (talk) 20:49, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

Lovely to see. You've helped immensely as I try to tidy up the mess of Medieval and Renaissance composers we have on WP. Even the art and literature equivalents have had so much more attention! Aza24 (talk) 22:04, 29 August 2020 (UTC)

Sorry to bother you with this again, I had added two categories to the template (Category:Music external link templates and Category:Composer templates) but in doing so I seem to have made it so any pages with this template are also added to the category. I tried moving the categories to the sub page, but to no avail. Aza24 (talk) 20:18, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Aza24, actually you solved it! Category updates through templates just take a while. Usually the categories are put inside <includeonly> tags and inside {{sandbox other}} to avoid the documentation and sandbox pages being put in the category as well though. --Trialpears (talk) 20:02, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-38

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

Problems

• The Wikipedia apps briefly showed pages without CSS last week. This meant they looked wrong. It was quickly fixed but cached pages without CSS were shown for a few hours. [23][24]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 September. It will be on all wikis from 17 September (calendar).

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

16:18, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-39

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

Recent changes

• There is a new tag for reverted edits. For example you can see it in the recent changes feed or in the article history. It is added to edits when they have been undone, rollbacked or manually reverted to an older version of the page. [25][26]

Changes later this week

• The number of times you can do something in a period of time on wiki is limited. This could be the number of edits per minute or the number of users you email in a day. Some users are not affected by all limits because of their user rights. They could soon see the limit even if it does not affect them. [27]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 22 September. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 23 September. It will be on all wikis from 24 September (calendar).

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

21:26, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-40

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

Recent changes

• Admins can now see links to diffs of deleted revisions on Special:AbuseLog. This uses the interface of Special:Undelete. [28]
• Editors are automatically added to some user groups. For example editors are added to autoconfirmed users when they have edited enough times and long enough. Abuse filters can hinder users from automatically getting user rights for a period of time. They can also remove rights user have. Wikis can now ask to change how long this period of time is for their wiki in Phabricator. It is currently five days. [29]

Problems

• Last year some abuse filters stopped working because of a new change. If they tried to use variables that were unavailable for that action they would fail. This has now been fixed. [30]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• You can't see the language links to other language versions from the talk page or history page. They are also not shown when you edit an article. This could change. It is not decided if for example the history page should link to another history page or to the article. You can take part in the discussion in Phabricator.
• The link colours could change. This is to make the difference between links and other text more clear. You can read more in Phabricator.
• In your preferences you can choose to get different notifications on the web or by email. You will see Apps as one of the alternatives later this week. This is because the Android and iOS Wikipedia apps will use push notifications for those who want them. You can see the preferences on the test wiki. The goal is to have push notifications on Android in October and on iOS in early 2021. [31]
• You can soon put pages on your watchlist for a limited time. This could be useful if you want to watch something for a shorter time but don't want it on your watchlist forever. It now works on mediawiki.org and will come to more wikis later. You can read more and see when it will come to other wikis.
• You can see what Wikimedians think are the best new technical tools this year. You can also nominate them.

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

21:23, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

Nomination for merging of Template:Being merged

Template:Being merged has been nominated for merging with Template:Merging. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. JsfasdF252 (talk) 01:50, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

San Francisco Bay Area and Random portal component

Thank you for your comments at Module talk:Random portal component#Expensive parser functions. I've been fixing portals with Lua errors and only Portal:San Francisco Bay Area now remains. As you are probably aware, the portal calls the module via {{Random portal component}} several times. Each call selects one from a set of no more than 233 pages, but the total size of the sets is well over 500. As well as displaying one randomly chosen page, the module has been changed to check the existence of the first 60 pages (59 of which it does not need on this occasion). We may need to rewrite the portal to use one of the alternative templates which are not required to perform such checks. Certes (talk) 18:20, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, I hadn't spotted that your comment was from last September! I've gone ahead with the change. Certes (talk) 10:10, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Certes, thanks for fixing this and explaining why it was behaving so strangely! I don't remember the details here though since it was a year ago I looked at this. --Trialpears (talk) 10:55, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-41

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

Recent changes

• There is a new tool where you can see which home wiki users have in discussions on Meta. This can help show which communities are not part of the discussion on wikis where we make decisions that affect many other wikis.
• You can now thank users for file uploads or for changing the language of a page. [32]

Problems

• There were many errors with the new MediaWiki version last week. The new version was rolled back. Updates that should have happened last week are late. [33]
• Everyone was logged out. This was because a user reported being logged in to someone else's account. The problem should be fixed now. [34]
• Many pages have JavaScript errors. You can read more and now see a list of user scripts with errors.

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 6 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 7 October. It will be on all wikis from 8 October (calendar).
• Letters immediately after a link are shown as part of the link. For example the entire word in [[Child]]ren is linked. On Arabic wikis this works at both the start and end of a word. Previously on Arabic wikis numbers and other non-letter Unicode characters were shown as part of the link at the start of a word but not at the end. Now only Latin and Arabic letters will extend links on Arabic wikis. [35]

Future changes

• You will be able to read but not to edit the wikis for up to an hour on 27 October around 14:00 (UTC). It will probably be shorter than an hour. [36]

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

16:24, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

Template cache no longer working?

Hi Trialpears, has PearBot stopped updating Template:Template cache? From the portals is seems it stopped updating a couple of month back. Arman ^(Talk) 14:00, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Armanaziz Huh I thought it should try again a few hours later if it encountered any issues and I haven't gotten any scheduling errors from toolforge. Will start a run manually and do some debugging when I get home. --Trialpears (talk) 17:29, 30 September 2020 (UTC)

Armanaziz Turns out that getting home before midnight is a rare event now a days, so it took more time than I thought to get to this. Seems like there has been some change to the toolforge pywikibot installation which caused this and probably requires a slight code change on my part. I don't currently have time to look into it more, but I'll make sure it gets fixed! --Trialpears (talk) 10:53, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Armanaziz Actually I managed to find the issue and it's back up and running. --Trialpears (talk) 10:59, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

It is working now. Such a pleasure to have you around! Arman ^(Talk) 11:42, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

Archives template

Hello, I had made a previous template edit request for Template:Archives and due to not collecting any consensus & the request itself, it was declined. I have changed it in line with the comment you made so that a banner appears when |large= is used and other changes, shown here. I put up a section on the talk page a few days ago although there was little response so I was wondering if you could provide feedback, thanks. Terasail^[Talk] 14:29, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Terasail,  Done. Thank you so much for doing this! This template have had some problems and someone going through and dealing with the weirdness and improving the auto archiving notice was sorely needed. I'm sorry if I sounded critical in my feedback, I just want it to get as good as possible! --Trialpears (talk) 07:52, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, Trialpears for the comments you have some good points I didn't consider. I have noticed that the index doesn't check for an index with a space for example at Talk:Donald Trump which appears to be more common, so I will probably attempt to just change it to be a hybrid format with the the Talk header. Terasail^[Talk] 09:23, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

@Trialpears: I have taken some of the ideas you presented and changed the template to reduce the length of the automatically archiving text, however I did not remove the bot parameter as I believe the editor adding the template can decide. I also fixed where you missed a |banner=. And I removed the switch for deciding the {{Archive list}} parameters, and changed it to a nested if, which is smaller in bytes and for me at least, is a bit easier to understand. {{Archive list}} also works more in line with {{Talk header}} and should show indexes. I was wondering if I should make a template edit request for these changes or not since I need a concensus however only you and CapnZapp have ever replied to my talk page comments. Thanks. Terasail^[Talk] 16:43, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-42

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

Problems

• Because of the problems with the MediaWiki version two weeks ago last week's updates are also late. [37][38][39]

Changes later this week

• Live previews didn't show the templates used in the preview if you just edited a section. This has now been fixed. You can also test CSS and JavaScript pages even if you have the live preview enabled. Previously this didn't work well. [40][41]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 13 October. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 14 October. It will be on all wikis from 15 October (calendar).

Future changes

• A new stable version of Pywikibot is coming soon. [42]

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

15:23, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-43

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

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• You will be able to read but not to edit the wikis for up to an hour on 27 October around 14:00 (UTC). It will probably be shorter than an hour. [43]
• In the AbuseFilter extension, the rmspecials() function will be updated soon so that it does not remove the "space" character. Wikis are advised to wrap all the uses of rmspecials() with rmwhitespace() wherever necessary to keep filters' behavior unchanged. You can use the search function on Special:AbuseFilter to locate its usage. [44]
• Some gadgets and user-scripts use the HTML div with the ID #jump-to-nav. This div will be removed soon. Maintainers should replace these uses with either #siteSub or #mw-content-text. A list of affected scripts is at the top of phab:T265373.

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

16:30, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-44

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

Problems

• You will be able to read but not to edit the wikis for up to an hour on October 27 around 14:00 (UTC). It will probably be shorter than an hour. [45]
• Last week, links to "diffs" from mobile watchlists and recentchanges were linking to page-revisions instead of diffs. This has now been fixed. [46]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• Since the introduction of the interface administrators user group in 2018, administrators couldn’t view the deleted history of CSS/JS pages. Now they can. [47]
• There was a problem with the Change Tags. The software would apply the "Reverted" tag to any page actions such as page-protection changes if they came directly after a reverted edit. This has now been fixed for new edits. [48]
• The Reply tool will be offered as an opt-in Beta Feature on most Wikipedias in November. Another announcement will be made once the date is finalized. [49]

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

17:37, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-45

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

• You can no longer read Wikimedia wikis if your browser uses very old TLS. This is because it is a security problem for everyone. It could lead to downgrade attacks. Since October 29, 2020, users who use old TLS versions will not be able to connect to Wikimedia projects. A list of browser recommendations is available. All modern operating systems and browsers are always able to reach Wikimedia projects. [50]
• There is a new automatic tracking category available: Pages with non-numeric formatnum arguments. It collects pages which use the {{formatnum}} parser function with invalid (non-numeric) input, e.g. {{formatnum:TECHNEWS}}. Note that {{formatnum:123,456}} is also invalid input: as described in the documentation, the argument should be unformatted so that it can be reliably and correctly localised. The tracking category will help identify problematic usage and double-formatting. The new tracking category's name can be translated at translatewiki. [51]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from November 3. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from November 4. It will be on all wikis from November 5 (calendar).
• Administrators and stewards will be able to use a special page (Special:CreateLocalAccount) to force local account creation for a global account. This is useful when account creation is blocked for that user (by a block or a filter). [52]
• The Reply tool will be offered as an opt-in Beta Feature on most Wikipedias on November 4. This change excludes the English, Russian, and German-language Wikipedias, plus a few smaller Wikipedias with special circumstances. You can read the help page and the troubleshooting guide for more information. [53]

Future changes

• A discussion has been restarted about using a Unicode minus sign (− U+2212) in the output of {{formatnum}} when it is given a negative argument. [54]
• In the future IP addresses of unregistered users will not be shown for everyone. They will get an alias instead. There will be a new user right or an opt-in function for more vandal fighters to see the IPs of unregistered users. There would be some criteria for who gets the user right or opt-in. There will also be other new tools to help handle vandalism. This is early in the process and the developers are still collecting information from the communities before they suggest solutions.

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

16:08, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-46

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

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• You can see reference previews. This shows a preview of the footnote when you hover over it. This has been a beta feature. It will move out of beta and be enabled by default. There will be an option not to use it. The developers are looking for small or medium-sized wikis to be the first ones. You can let them know if your wiki is interested. [55]
• From November 16 the categories will not be sorted in order for a short time. This is because the developers are upgrading to a new version of the internationalisation library. They will use a script to fix the existing categories. This can take a few hours or a few days depending on how big the wiki is. You can read more. [56][57]

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

15:49, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-47

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

• Listings on category pages are sorted on each wiki for that language using a library. For a brief period on 16 November, changes to categories will not be sorted correctly for most languages. This is because the developers are upgrading to a new version of the library. They will then use a script to fix the existing categories. This will take a few hours or a few days depending on how big the wiki is. You can read more. [58][59]

Changes later this week

• If you merged two pages in a namespace where pages can't redirect this used to break the merge history. This will now be fixed. [60]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 November. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 November. It will be on all wikis from 19 November (calendar).

Future changes

• The Community Wishlist Survey is now open for proposals. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on. You can post proposals from 16 to 30 November. You can vote on proposals from 8 December to 21 December.

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

15:36, 16 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-48

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

• Timestamps in Special:Log are now links. They go to Special:Log for only that entry. This is how timestamps work on for example the history page. [61]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

• The Wikimedia Cloud VPS hosts technical projects for the Wikimedia movement. Developers need to claim projects they use. This is because old and unused projects are removed once a year. Unclaimed projects can be shut down from 1 December. Unclaimed projects can be deleted from 1 January. [62]

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

17:17, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

ArbCom 2020 Elections voter message

Hello! Voting in the 2020 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 7 December 2020. 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 2020 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) 03:00, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-49

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

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 1 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 2 December. It will be on all wikis from 3 December (calendar).

Future changes

• The iOS Wikipedia app will show readers more of the article history. They can see new updates and easier see how the article has changed over time. This is an experiment. It will first be shown only to some iOS app users as a test. [63][64]
• The Wiki Replicas can be used for SQL queries. You can use Quarry, PAWS or other ways to do this. To make the Wiki Replicas stable there will be two changes. Cross-database JOINS will no longer work. You can also only query a database if you connect to it directly. This will happen in February 2021. If you think this affects you and you need help you can post on Phabricator or on Wikitech. [65]

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

17:43, 30 November 2020 (UTC)

HELP ME

hi dear user, i have done some editation on Ebrahim Fathi but now i want to return it, and beacuse i don't have access, please return my editiation.Wikibachan (talk). 23:40, 6 December 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-50

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 now put pages on your watchlist for a limited period of time. Some wikis already had this function. [66][67]

Changes later this week

• Information from Wikidata that is used on a wiki page can be shown in recent changes and watchlists on a Wikimedia wiki. To see this you need to turn on showing Wikidata edits in your watchlist in the preferences. Changes to the Wikidata description in the language of a Wikimedia wiki will then be shown in recent changes and watchlists. This will not show edits to languages that are not relevant to your wiki. [68][69]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 December. It will be on all wikis from 10 December (calendar).

Future changes

• You can vote on proposals in the Community Wishlist Survey between 8 December and 21 December. The survey decides what the Community Tech team will work on.

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

16:14, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Another template request...?

Hey Trialpears, I hope this message finds you well. Would you be willing to make a template basically akin to Template:ODNBsub but for Grove music and Grove art? The only difference would be that the grove music "UK public library membership" would go to this link and grove art to this one. Now that I think about it, I guess it might be not "Grove music/art" but "Oxford music/art" – but it doesn't really matter. Let me know – Aza24 (talk) 02:28, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Aza24, looks quite simple. Will probably do it tomorrow. --Trialpears (talk) 00:00, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Aza24 Please excuse my slowness here. I've created {{Grove Art subscription}} and {{Grove Music subscription}} which I believe is what you're looking for? I would be happy to help out more or improve these templates, but as you can see it may take a few days. --Trialpears (talk) 22:50, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

No worries at all about the delay! Looking at the templates, they're exactly what I needed – so thank you! Best - Aza24 (talk) 00:06, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-51

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

• There is a Wikipedia app for KaiOS phones. It was released in India in September. It can now be downloaded in other countries too. [70]

Changes later this week

• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 December. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 December. It will be on all wikis from 17 December (calendar).

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

21:33, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-52

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

Tech News

• Because of the holidays the next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 11 January 2021.

Recent changes

• The {{citation needed}} template shows when a statement in a Wikipedia article needs a source. If you click on it when you edit with the visual editor there is a popup that explains this. Now it can also show the reason and when it was added. [71]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week or next week.

Future changes

• You can propose and discuss what technical improvements should be done for geographic information. This could be coordinates, maps or other related things.
• Some wikis use LanguageConverter to switch between writing systems or variants of a language. This can only be done for the entire page. There will be a <langconvert> tag that can convert a piece of text on a page. [72]
• Oversighters and stewards can hide entries in Special:AbuseLog. They can soon hide multiple entries at once using checkboxes. This works like hiding normal edits. It will happen in early January. [73]

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

20:52, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-02

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

Recent changes

• You can choose to be reminded when you have not added an edit summary. This can be done in your preferences. This could conflict with the CAPTCHA. This has now been fixed. [74]
• You can link to specific log entries. You can get these links for example by clicking the timestamps in the log. Until now, such links to private log entries showed no entry even if you had permission to view private log entries. The links now show the entry. [75]
• Admins can use the abuse filter tool to automatically prevent bad edits. Three changes happened last week:
  • The filter editing interface now shows syntax errors while you type. This is similar to JavaScript pages. It also shows a warning for regular expressions that match the empty string. New warnings will be added later. [76]
  • Oversighters can now hide multiple filter log entries at once using checkboxes on Special:AbuseLog. This is how the usual revision deletion works. [77]
  • When a filter matches too many actions after it has been changed it is "throttled". The most powerful actions are disabled. This is to avoid many editors getting blocked when an administrator made a mistake. The administrator will now get a notification about this "throttle".
• There is a new tool to build new skins. You can also see existing skins. You can give feedback. [78]
• Bots using the API no longer watch pages automatically based on account preferences. Setting the watchlist to watch will still work. This is to reduce the size of the watchlist data in the database. [79]
• Scribunto's file metadata now includes length. [80]
• CSS and JavaScript code pages now have link anchors to line numbers. You can use wikilinks like w:en:MediaWiki:Common.js#L-50. [81]
• There was a new version of MediaWiki last week. You can read a detailed log of all 763 changes. Most of them are very small and will not affect you.

Changes later this week

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

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

15:41, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Is Template cache working correctly?

Hi Trialpears, sorry I can only bother you with this. I am not sure if PearBot is correctly updating Template:Template cache. Isn't it supposed to fetch at least 6 most recent items? In Portal:Bangladesh for example, the fetched news item does not seem to have the key words. It would be great if you could take a look what's going on. Arman ^(Talk) 13:19, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Armanaziz, I've had a look and found the weirdness you're referring to and have no idea why it happened. It seems to be working now at least and it was not PearBOTs fault as the bot only caches the result of {{Transclude selected current events|days=365|Bangladesh|Dhaka|Bengali}} since it would increase the page load time by a huge amount and in many cases time out otherwise. If you want to persue this further I think asking around at Template talk:Transclude selected current events or WP:VPT is your best bet. --Trialpears (talk) 15:38, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

My talkpage

Thanks for spotting the problem with my talkpage. I wonder why it worked for a decade before stuffing up? In any case, I'll see if I can delete the /archivelist shaidar cuebiyar (talk) 02:21, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Shaidar cuebiyar, I think it's my fault from when I made the auto option a lot more automatic over a year ago making it possible for it to notice whether an archive list was provide or not and turn it on or off accordingly. While doing this I fixed the roughly 1% of cases where it wouldn't work when they used the list parameter, but I forgot about the archive list since it doesn't show up in wikicode. I've now compiled a list of all 175 archive lists currently in use and intend on checking that there is no problem. If the proportion of pages with issues is the same as for the list parameter this issue should only affect less than 5 pages. --Trialpears (talk) 12:00, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your explanation and help.shaidar cuebiyar (talk) 12:57, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

Sorry to disturb, again, but I still don't like the display on my talkpage. I would prefer to see my talkpage list (and link to) the Archives numerically, e.g. 1, 2, 3, ... and not its current form with no list of archives. I have some unnumbered/poorly numbered Archives, which could be deleted if they are part of the problem e.g. User talk:Shaidar cuebiyar/Archives, User talk:Shaidar cuebiyar/archivelist and User talk:Shaidar cuebiyar/archivelist/Archive 1. You have my permission to edit my talkpage and delete those additional (now blanked) subpages such that my main talkpage displays the archive box better. Thank you in advance.shaidar cuebiyar (talk) 00:52, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Hpy festive season. BTW, I still have no vision of my archives on my talkpage. The above blanked pages still exist, how do I get them deleted so that my talkpage works better?–shaidar cuebiyar (talk) 06:26, 6 January 2021 (UTC)

Shaidar cuebiyar, sorry for the wait. You caught me right in my longest period of inactivity since I started editing, but it should be fixed now. Any text in a subpage named /archivelist is automatically displayed in the box for historical reasons and now i moved the page to User talk:Shaidar cuebiyar/old archivelist which lets it work like normal. Currently it displays an automatically updating numbered list which should include all your archives as all of them seem to follow the /Archive # naming convention. If you want to customize it or link to other pages the simplest way to do that would be using |list=. I sadly can't help you with deleting them since I'm not an admin, but if you wish putting {{db-u1}} on them should make an admin delete them. --Trialpears (talk) 15:51, 17 January 2021 (UTC)

Yum! Thanks heaps. I won't worry about deleting those for now.shaidar cuebiyar (talk) 03:08, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Tech News: 2021-03

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

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

• The Growth team plans to add features to get more visitors to edit to more Wikipedias. You can help translating the interface.
• You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for a short time on 26 January at 07:00 (UTC). [82]
• MassMessage posts could be automatically timestamped in the future. This is because MassMessage senders can now send pages using MassMessage. Pages are more difficult to sign. If there are times when a MassMessage post should not be timestamped you can let the developers know.

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

16:09, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Tagging categories

Hello, Trialpears,

You don't need to worry about empty sockpuppet categories, this frequently happens when a different sockpuppeteer is identified and a case is moved. The categories just get deleted as CSD G6, housekeeping, uncontroversial deletion. You can tag them for speedy deletion if you come across them but they usually appear on the daily Wikipedia:Database reports/Empty categories and get deleted. Thanks! Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 02:05, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

Liz, alright! That CfD was in a bit weird and in retrospect I'm quite surprised no one deleted it earlier. --Trialpears (talk) 06:35, 22 January 2021 (UTC)