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ACE stuff

If there’s anything urgent than needs a commissioner, I’m personally more likely to see it during the day if you email (tl;dr I’m on mobile only during the day right now and email is easier than mediawiki at my job site...) Even if it’s just a poke that way to an on-wiki question, it’ll get a faster response. TonyBallioni (talk) 04:26, 13 November 2019 (UTC)


Not eligible yet received ACE voter message

Figured I'd give you a heads up that in spite of not actually being eligible to vote this year, I have received the voter message. (Specifically, while I do fulfil criteria i, ii and iv, I don't fulfil criterium iii, "10 live edits (in any namespace) in the one year prior to Friday 00:00, 1 November 2019". Due to prolonged absence from which I have only returned the 15th of this month, I actually only have two edits in the timespan specified. (On the other hand, I have made a couple thousand edits since returning, so I can see how this wasn't spotted prior to the message going out) AddWittyNameHere 00:24, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

@AddWittyNameHere: thank you for letting me know. We had a lot of problems getting the lists together this year, and will check in to this right away. Please don't actually vote (so we don't have to manually strike you). — xaosflux Talk 00:29, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
@Cyberpower678: - please see above and YGM. — xaosflux Talk 00:30, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
You're welcome, and yeah, not voting when not actually eligible to vote seems pretty obvious to me. *nod* Still, thanks for verifying that and best of luck to both of you during the, ahem, trying times surrounding the ACE. AddWittyNameHere 00:33, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
@AddWittyNameHere: hopefully your early notice will let us get this corrected before too much manual work is needed! — xaosflux Talk 00:36, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
Hope so, ArbCom & elections are surrounded by enough drama without a mass of ineligible voters voting. Oh, and to save you both some time verifying my number of edits in the specified timespan, here's my contributions from Nov 1st, 2018 to Nov 1st, 2019. AddWittyNameHere 00:37, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
@Cyberpower678: if you have a good list of over-eligibles I can have Fluxbot go remove their ACE messages too. — xaosflux Talk 00:41, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
Not Cyberpower678, but in checking Special:Contributions/MediaWiki_message_delivery, I spot a number of blocked accounts who received a message. Would it be helpful to either of you if I went through those contribs and listed the blocked accounts for you so you both can focus on the non-blocked non-eligibles? AddWittyNameHere 00:49, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
@AddWittyNameHere: the votewiki server will automatically stop blocked users from voting (and the scrutineer process also checks for this). That being said, would you mind just putting a few examples here on my page? — xaosflux Talk 00:51, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
Most of them are folks whose blocks will expire somewhere throughout the voting period. I imagine that is intended behaviour? (If not, one example of that category is Tamer Gunner). There's at least one case of an account that has been indef'd that I've found, but as the block happened a couple of hours prior to the mass-message, I'm guessing that happened after the last time the voter list was generated. (here. Blocked about six hours prior to receiving the message.) EDIT: & another: blocked ~3h before the ACE message) AddWittyNameHere 00:58, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
@AddWittyNameHere: yes, if they had a block that should expire prior to the election, or if their block was very recent they would end up getting a mass-message. Blocked users are not excluded from the "eligible" list, however they are barred from actually voting while blocked. — xaosflux Talk 01:00, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
Okay, makes sense. Glad to know it's not purely reliant on scrutineers actually spotting their block but there being technical measures in place to prevent it as well. Anyway, I'm sure you've got better things to do right now than explain to me how exactly things work so I'll stop hanging around your talk page and wasting your time while you're obviously busy. AddWittyNameHere 01:04, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
Xaosflux, this will be tricky to do short term. I'm regenerating the list with the upper bound in place, but it may takes some time.—CYBERPOWER (Around) 01:06, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

Edit filter for breaking headers?

Would this be a good case for a warn edit filter? I do it more often. –xenotalk 23:15, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

@Xeno: unless you see it happening like that a lot, probably not, maybe ones like === Level on the Left not equal to level on the Right ==== - but again not if it is very infrequent. — xaosflux Talk 23:18, 19 November 2019 (UTC)


WP:BLPN and archives search engine indexing

I asked at WT:BLPN, but haven't gotten much of a response, and saw you'd done a fair bit of the maintenance on the site robots.txt. It seems that, while BLPN is not indexed on search engines (for what I should think is good reasons), all its archives are indexed.([1] Do you know if this was by design for some reason? It doesn't seem to make much sense that material on BLPN is NOINDEX, but then it gets indexed as soon as it's archived. Seraphimblade Talk to me 23:42, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

@Seraphimblade: the robots file appears to be correct and contains:
Disallow: /wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard
Disallow: /wiki/Wikipedia%3ABiographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard
Disallow: /wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard
Disallow: /wiki/Wikipedia_talk%3ABiographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard
Since robots control is a mid-string match it should be catching entries such as https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard/Archive293 and a robots test utility confirms this. So google may not be crawling to index these pages however, other pages may be linking to them or transcluding them. A possible fix would be to add __NOINDEX__ to those pages, either directly or via a template (such as an archive header). If you would like to explore that, I suggest first copying this section to WP:VPT to get a few other opinions. Best regards, — xaosflux Talk 00:33, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for taking a look. I've posted it at VPT. Seraphimblade Talk to me 19:14, 4 December 2019 (UTC)


Why did you revert my edit on Wikipedia:Interface administrators and on Wikipedia:Stewards?

NASCARfan0548 ↗ 03:19, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

@NASCARfan0548: I used "undo" and included notes. As for the reason, I think your short description wasn't very helpful (Wikimedia project page - what is the point of that - who is that description useful to? Also that page isn't really about wikimedia at all - it is a community policy) - see a subsequent edit made to that same section here: Special:Diff/932059344 which uses a short description with a bit more information. — xaosflux Talk 12:54, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Help needed - again...

Hello, Xaosflux! I'm sorry to bother you with a "personal" request but I didn't know where else to ask. I can't edit any existing Wikipedia/Wikiquote page on the Albanian language. This includes all the namespaces, not just the main one. It's a user-side problem because the experience with EnWiki is still normal to me but I don't know what I've done wrong and what to do to fix it with the other projects. I tried using the projects in safemode and unfortunately nothing changed. Given that we don't have many active admins, my inability to edit pages it's becoming a bigger problem than it should be.

What actually happens is that the loading process that happens when you press "edit" just stops in the middle and some elements in the page change but I can't write or delete anything on it. The other aspects of wikiwork seem just fine. I can create new pages (and edit them how I want), protect them or delete them normally. It's just when you need to actually "edit" (press that button) on an existing page that the problem starts. Can you help me in any way? I thought of asking at the Phabricator but I know it's not a technical problem on their side so... :/ - Klein Muçi (talk) 14:28, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi: Is this problem limited to you? Is it limited to a one account? It sounds like you may be trying to get the Visual Editor loaded? Try changing to the preferences/editing option for "Temporarily disable the visual editor while it is in beta" to checked. — xaosflux Talk 14:52, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
Also, try disabling any lines in w:sq:Përdoruesi:Klein Muçi/common.js. — xaosflux Talk 14:56, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
Yes and apparently yes. I tried logging out and it went back to normal. I already have that option checked. And I did try removing all my lines from there. Unfortunately the problem still persists. :( - Klein Muçi (talk) 17:28, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi: I was able to edit project space, so it isn't a "all logged in users" problem. You may have a gadget or other odd setting, in w:sq:Speciale:Preferencat there is a "Restore all defaults" option at the bottom of the page you could try. You could try to export these using a script first for reference (e.g. User:BethNaught/exportUserOptions.js - copy paste it to your user common.js, then go to Special:ExportUserOptions). If you do it before and after the reset you can find out what was different, assuming your issue is resolved. — xaosflux Talk 17:42, 30 December 2019 (UTC)
Yes, it's only related to me. Restoring all preferences to default looks like a good idea. I'll try that, hoping it fixes my problem. Can you explain me more clearly what you mean with the export thing? I don't understand that part at all. :/ Anyway, let me wish you a happy new year! You've spent much time helping me in different occasions so I hope you get to spend even more time with people you love in this upcoming year. :) I'll try restoring all my preferences to default soon (maybe after you explain me what you meant with the export part) and post the results here. - Klein Muçi (talk) 17:48, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi: that is just a handy script to export all of your preferences to a file for you, it is the same as going to each part of preferences and writing down the current values. If defaulting fixes you, you can have a list of the before/after settings for your account. — xaosflux Talk 18:07, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

So, I copy-paste the script and where exactly do I get my preferences file? I should go to "Special:ExportUserOptions" and I get it there? - Klein Muçi (talk) 18:16, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi: yup the steps are:
  1. Paste that script in to w:sq:Përdoruesi:Klein Muçi/common.js
  2. Follow this link: w:sq:Special:ExportUserOptions
  3. Click and it will dump all your preferences to the screen
  4. Remove the script from your common.js when no longer needed
I just did it successfully at w:sq:Përdoruesi:Xaosflux/common.js. — xaosflux Talk 18:30, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
So, I did restore my preferences to the default value but unfortunately still nothing. :/ At this point, I'm not sure you can help me anymore. - Klein Muçi (talk) 15:50, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Maybe it has to do with the fact that I've set up global preferences and nothing is really back to default without deactivating those? - Klein Muçi (talk) 15:53, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Nah, I restored those to default too but nothing changed. - Klein Muçi (talk) 15:57, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi: does the problem follow you to other computers/browsers? Try using a different browser in private/incognito mode to log on. — xaosflux Talk 16:21, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

The problem is I have a hard time logging in since for the moment I lack a smartphone and I've activated the 2FA (I'm an interface admin) and don't remember how to get the codes from the PC/laptop. It's been months without logging out because of this reason. - Klein Muçi (talk) 16:39, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi: that sounds like a very serious 2FA issue that you should immediately resolve before it gets worse (and you potentially get permanently locked out of your account!). Help:Two-factor authentication has some information on this. If you currently have no working 2FA code generator you should disabled 2FA now, get a generator of some sort (it can be a computer-based one) then re-enroll. — xaosflux Talk 16:42, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Actually I don't. And if I remember correctly, I only have 5 remaining scratch codes so I've been reluctant to log out for that reason. I've been hoping I could get a tablet in the near future but it's taking a bit longer than I thought and... I'll follow the instructions to get a generator, get a new batch of codes and try to log in into a different browser, see if that makes any difference. Thank you for your patience! :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Klein Muçi (talk • contribs) 16:56, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
I fixed the problem with the 2FA generator. I tried several times logging in and out on Google Chrome and Internet Explorer (even going incognito). It doesn't make any difference. If I'm not logged in, everything is normal, no matter what the browser. As soon as I log in, I can't edit anymore. - Klein Muçi (talk) 17:22, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
You wrote to me in SqWiki but I can't answer you there (since I can't edit my talk page :P ) so, I'm writing here. I don't think that's an admin related problem. Yesterday I spoke with another SqWiki volunteer who has the same problem and he isn't an admin. He also can edit normally in EnWiki. @Arianit: have a look here. :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 12:58, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi: oh ok - I thought you could only not edit "Wikipedia:" namespace there - you can't edit ANYTHING? Who is the other user with the same problem? — xaosflux Talk 14:37, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
If you can gather a few people with the same problem, go ahead and open a phab ticket. There is likely something in common (like a skin, common js, etc). Can you edit via the mobile web (try this link) or with some odd skin like modern try this link? — xaosflux Talk 14:40, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

No, I can't edit on any namespace. The other user is Arianit, who I mentioned above. And strangely enough, I can edit from both of the links you gave me now. (@Arianit: is the same for you?) What could this mean? - Klein Muçi (talk) 15:48, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi: Which skin are you using on sqwiki? Try changing that in your preferences. The "default" is usually "Vector", try "Monobook" to see if that fixes you. If so it could be something in w:sq:MediaWiki:Vector.css. — xaosflux Talk 16:12, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

I'm using Vector. I tried cycling through all the skins. It works normally with MinervaNeue and Modern and it doesn't work with the other 3 remaining skins. You've already helped me a lot by this as I now at least found a way I can edit. Any idea what's wrong though? I remember it started suddenly one day, without me doing any changes to the preferences or my personal scripts. - Klein Muçi (talk) 16:30, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi: I'd start by rolling back any recent changes to core pages like MediaWiki:Common.js, MediaWiki:Common.css, MediaWiki:Vector.js, MediaWiki:Vector.css. — xaosflux Talk 16:40, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
There seem to be some other "odd" things going on at sqwiki - like some of the languages seem to be off, but I think that is all cosmetic (e.g. MediaWiki:Sidebar has been translated directly, rather then pointing to labels - that means that it breaks automatic translation for all readers that change their language. (compare that message to other large projects like w:de:MediaWiki:Sidebar or w:es:MediaWiki:Sidebar). This part should NOT be causing your editing problem though. — xaosflux Talk 16:40, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

From what you mentioned, only 1 of those pages has had technical changes made in the last months and that is MediaWiki:Common.js. I'll try rolling back that change now and see if it makes any difference. If it doesn't, I'm turning it back again. As for the other changes you mention, we should have a lot of problems similar to that as we haven't done much work in the Mediawiki or JS pages. We've always lacked on the tech side a bit, that's why I keep coming here for questions related to that. :P - Klein Muçi (talk) 17:08, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

I was just made conscious that I can edit JS pages normally. That's apparently the only thing I can edit. I tried changing that page. I'm waiting a bit to see if it fixes anything and I'll write here again about the results. - Klein Muçi (talk) 17:16, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
I can also edit the module pages. Everything that is "forced" to be opened in a code-way editor, is normal. Everything else that can be accessed in visual editor, is problematic. I don't know if I'm making myself clear enough. I press "edit". The page shows a loading bar for a split second that doesn't fully load then it opens similar to the visual editor but you can't modify/edit it. It's just as if you're reading it. - Klein Muçi (talk) 17:24, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
Nothing happened with the roll back at that page so I undid my change. I'm sure it must be a sort of glitch related to the visual editor (although I've already deactivated it). Is the visual editor related in any way to skins? That would explain why in some skins, my editing experience is normal. - Klein Muçi (talk) 17:29, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi: So when you go to a page, does it work fine if you use "Edit source" instead of "Edit"? (FYI both Edit Source and Edit work for me on sqwiki). — xaosflux Talk 17:41, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
If you make a brand new account, did you say if it worked fine? — xaosflux Talk 17:44, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

I just found out I'm able to fix the problem by deactivating the beta feature "new wikitext mode"!! That forces all the pages to be able to be edited like the JS and module pages are, in a code like manner. This is a even better solution than the skins' one. Apparently it was indeed related to the visual editor. Any idea what would be the problem though? I really want to have the syntax highlighting feature. :/ - Klein Muçi (talk) 17:46, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

I tested it many times. If that feature is on, it doesn't matter if I press "Edit" or "Edit source". The same things happen with both of the buttons. A loading bar appears that gets stuck in the middle and the page appears as it was opened in VE but it doesn't let you edit it. - Klein Muçi (talk) 17:48, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi: So Good News?! If this only breaks with "New Wikitext Mode" beta feature enabled, turning it off is the fix - and this should be the default for all of your users as well. You can get additional help on that beta experiment at mw:2017_wikitext_editor/Feedback. I am a bit surprised that when you tried "Restore all defaults" it didn't turn that off though - and that could be a new bug I can chase - did you ever actually use that option? — xaosflux Talk 18:14, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
Just FYI I just tested with a spare account, enabling that - then using "restore all defaults" did turn it off for me. — xaosflux Talk 18:16, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
Very good news! I'm grateful for that solution. I genuinely did try "restore all defaults". The problem is I have all my preferences set to global so when I did that, it did nothing for me. Then I went back and restored even the global settings at the default state but unfortunately I didn't see any fix. I must have been erratic in my change. I'll go now and try defaulting the preferences again (both local and global) to see if that process goes normally and post the results here. - Klein Muçi (talk) 18:38, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
I just tried it. Defaulting the local preferences does nothing if you've set up your global ones but defaulting the global ones does indeed fix the problem. I've been too fast with my changes and I haven't seen it. I'm sorry, I could have saved everyone involved much time. @Arianit:, please try if deactivating that feature helps. It should, I think. Thank you a lot for your patience, Xaosflux! :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 18:53, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

I have a question now though... No big deal if you can't answer it, my main problem is already fixed but I'm really surprised. I have exactly the same preferences set for everything (as I have only the global ones without any local exceptions). Still, when I try to edit a page in EnWiki I get an editor with a toolbar on top of it where I can activate the syntax highlight. When I try to edit in SqWiki, no toolbars are available. What is happening? :/ I care mostly about the syntax highlight feature but still this whole thing is a bit surprising to me. - Klein Muçi (talk) 19:09, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi: the wikitext syntax highlighter does work on sqwiki; I just tried with a new account. In SOURCE EDITING mode, it is the 7'th icon just to the left of ">Avancuar". For this to show the "Default" options should be enabled in preferences, in "Redaktimi" make sure "Aktizoni redaktimin e zgjeruar re shiritit te mjeteve" is CHECKED. — xaosflux Talk 19:56, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
Yes, I do have that activated in my global preferences. I even changed the language in English so I could be sure. Enable the editing toolbar - This is sometimes called the '2010 wikitext editor'. But I still don't get any kind of toolbar or icon when I start editing. - Klein Muçi (talk) 05:12, 4 January 2020 (UTC)
I returned everything back to default one more time and then set my global preferences again. The toolbar now shows! :D Maybe it was just a temporary glitch. I'm really surprised you had the patience to deal with every one of my problems until they were solved. Thank you a lot! :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 06:03, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Arbitration case opened

You recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/RHaworth. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/RHaworth/Evidence. Please add your evidence by January 14, 2020, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/RHaworth/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, CodeLyokotalk 03:27, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2019).

Guideline and policy news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:07, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-02

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  • When trying to move a page, if the target title already exists then a warning message is shown. The warning message will now include a link to the target title. [2]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 7 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 8 January. It will be on all wikis from 9 January (calendar).

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21:23, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Draft Checking

Hello sir, please check my draft draft: Abhishek Kumar Ambar. Last time page was deleted by RHaworth sir. He protect the page. But now he is offline from last 7 days. Please check my draft and unprotect the page. Swapnil Kaustubh (talk) 11:43, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

@Swapnil Kaustubh: to submit your draft for review the best way is to:
  1. Go to the page
  2. Click "Edit"
  3. Paste this code right to the first line
    • {{subst:submit|Swapnil Kaustubh}}
  4. Click save
That will submit your draft to the review queue. — xaosflux Talk 12:31, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

UTRS

Just saw you were on, so I was wondering if you could process my UTRS IPBE request. With thanks. --qedk (t 桜 c) 20:19, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

And ofcourse, a very happy new year (albeit a week late!) --qedk (t 桜 c) 20:20, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
@QEDK:  Done, and same to you. — xaosflux Talk 20:26, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
Thanks a ton. --qedk (t 桜 c) 20:31, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

vestigial abilities

Are you able to figure out why bureaucrats have some replicated abilities from admin package? Was there any old discussions on the topic? I'd prefer a consistency - either take away all these side grantables/revocables, or allow to grant/revoke them all. But since I'm just one weirdo, I don't think I'll actually look for any changes unless someone joins me. –xenotalk 16:55, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

@Xeno: yes, I've looked in to this before. In short, six groups: 'crat; admin'; autoconfirmed; user; and (all) - are "built in" mediawiki groups that come with a built in set of permissions. Everything else we see is because a WMF project added or removed something for out local copy. (c.f. mw:Help:User_rights_and_groups). It really hasn't been worth any developer time to purposefully build a revocation configuration for these on the WMF instances. "Adding" a permission in to the group is "easy", so it gets done regularly. Most of the things you see that are left in by default aren't really used here specifically but are left behind because mediawiki crats still perform account renames on projects without SUL. If we really really wanted to make a practical change, it would likely be easier to create another new group and give it only what it minimally needs (e.g. "Xeno's Group: +/-{sysop, bot, copyviobot}"). Ultimately, I don't think it's worth the effort to pursue. — xaosflux Talk 17:08, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
Thank you for clearing up that mystery. Makes sense now. I agree it's not worth the effort to pursue, given my own rather limited participation in PERM venues anyway. –xenotalk 17:27, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
You forgot +crat. What do you think about having local -crat available? –xenotalk 17:40, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
@Xeno: I think it is so rare that it isn't really a problem, I don't see any specific problem other then the "rouge crat" who decrats and deadmins everyone scenario :D — xaosflux Talk 17:44, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
Rate limiter maybe? I just prefer have the logs local (and also not having our local users be told they have to "cool down" for 24 hours before their request is actioned). Either that or phab:T6055. –xenotalk 17:57, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
@Xeno: phab:T6055 is a better fix for the logs (or something not-quite, but similiar (e.g. have log searches additionally automatically include results from the upstream source). Notably, crats have "noratelimit" in the default group too! I'm not really opposed to adding -crat to the group. There are very few projects that have this set up, but it is not unprecedented (e.g. huwiki and fiwki have -crat in crats). Getting community consensus to enable it should be all that is needed, feel free to open a discussion! — xaosflux Talk 19:59, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
And I've got a sneaky feeling some new arguments over what to do with non-admin potential arbcom members may be, and this is more likely to occur this year than even. — xaosflux Talk 17:09, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
Oversight and CU have the necessary privileges since 2011. –xenotalk 17:30, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
@Xeno: looks like (abusefilter-log-private) is missing, but honestly I don't think it is actually being "used", would be easy enough to add in to CU/OS if needed though - thanks for the reply! — xaosflux Talk 17:42, 31 October 2019 (UTC)
Well-spotted. –xenotalk 17:44, 31 October 2019 (UTC)


ARBCOM Run?

Hi Xaosflux,

I don't suppose you'd considered running as an Arb this year - in a year we're in particular need for good candidates we're distinctly short of any and you'd clearly be a great choice. Couldn't see that you'd been asked this year, apologies if a duplicate query :) Nosebagbear (talk) 18:26, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

@Nosebagbear: I'm not actually a "commissioner", only a "coordinator" so I'm not technically barred, however I'm not interested in running for ArbCom this year - thank you for the words of encouragement though! I try to balance my time to ensure I don't over commit to things and have just signed up as an oversighter this year to add to my wiki-workload; I just don't have the time to commit to the committee right now. Please do keep trying to recruit people, we are in need of candidates! — xaosflux Talk 18:59, 7 November 2019 (UTC)
Fair enough! I'm asking a few, but I'm hoping we get some more self-nominating or being recruited by others, since we're currently short by 7 candidates - I know there's a NA conference, perhaps those attending can do some recruiting there. Nosebagbear (talk) 19:17, 7 November 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. Legobot (talk) 04:28, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

Damn you're good

I don't have time to fill out the barnstar application form in triplicate, but keep up the damn good work - in all you do. –xenotalk 04:33, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

  • So you can probably answer this: why doesn't the "thanked" text persist? i.e. if I refresh the history of a page where I have sent thanks, the thanks button comes back and I can thank again (though it does nothing, no matter how thankful I am). –xenotalk 06:00, 11 November 2019 (UTC)
    @Xeno: a bit annoying:yup! Short answer: that data is not stored on the server. Long answer: storing that data isn't very useful and would get very large, having to maintain a database of everyone who thanked each edit or action, then read that and use it while composing the web text of every single page with thanks links would be an expensive use of resources that wouldn't accomplish much. The other way would be to give you a cookie/localstorage token for every thank, then have your browser check every link to see if it should hide it or not - also messy. — xaosflux Talk 13:54, 11 November 2019 (UTC)
    GOTO 10. –xenotalk 15:29, 11 November 2019 (UTC)


Tech News: 2020-03

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

Recent changes

  • You can no longer read Wikimedia wikis if your browser use very old TLS. This is because it is a security problem for everyone. It can lead to downgrade attacks. Since 9 December you just see a warning. Soon the browser will not connect to the wikis at all. Most are users on Android systems older than 4.4. You can read the browser recommendations. [3]
  • Special:LinkSearch has been moved from the "Redirecting special pages" section on Special:SpecialPages to the "Lists of pages" section. [4]

Changes later this week

  • Advanced item Wikis can protect pages so that only some users can edit them. The standard protection levels are Require autoconfirmed or confirmed access and Require administrator access. If your wiki use more protection levels the technical name might be renamed for standardisation. This doesn't affect what users see. [5]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 14 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 15 January. It will be on all wikis from 16 January (calendar).

Future changes

  • Deepcat and Catgraph will stop working. This will happen at the end of January. This is because you can now use the normal search function instead. [6]
  • You can use <ref follow="…"> to merge footnotes that follow each other. It is meant to be used for digitised books on Wikisource. If the order of the footnotes is wrong no error was shown but the bad <ref> was shown outside the <references /> list. This will change and you will see an error message instead. [7]

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

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:40, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-04

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

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

  • There is a new suggestion for what to show when someone edits without registering an account. This is to give unregistered editors better privacy and make some anti-vandalism work go faster. You can give feedback.
  • Advanced item Pywikibot is a Python library to automate work on wikis. It will no longer support Python 2. Use the python2 tag if you need to continue running Python 2 scripts. The Pywikibot team strongly recommends to migrate to Python 3. You can get help to do so. [8]
  • Advanced item The weekly MediaWiki branch cut will soon become automated. The timing for this cut may change. You can discuss in Phabricator if this affects you. [9]
  • Advanced item You can read about coming technical events and mentoring interns.

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

19:42, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Extensions

Hello, Xaosflux! I just finished checking the list (category) of all stable MediaWiki extensions looking for interesting ones I (our communities) might find useful to have.

I'd like to have some advice on 1 or 2 of them if you have any information.

First of all, the MultiBoilerplate extension. Is this really how I understand it to be? You get preformatted text templates to choose from in page creations? And you get to choose how these text templates (boilerplate) are formatted? Can you still create pages normally? This would be a tremendous help in our Wikiquote since we use standardized formats for articles there.

How does this extension change from the BoilerRoom extension?

Secondly, does this extension just make it possible to search for every page in a project, without needing to add the namespace of the page being searched?

And lastly, does this extension show the contributions scores in that special page without any extra customization needed?

Is there somewhere I can find examples of each of them in use? I'd be very interested especially in finding some examples about the boilerplate's extensions. - Klein Muçi (talk) 16:38, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi: sorry I don't have any experience with these. To find out more I'd start with the talk page of those extensions, or the editor who last made any significant updates to the documentations. Not all extensions are in use on, or even appropriate for use in, the way WMF has our servers set up. — xaosflux Talk 18:42, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
I understand. I was hoping you could know any way to check where an extension is used so I could use that as an example but looks like there isn't a simple way (or any way) for that apparently. Thank you anyway! :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 02:30, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi: most of the extensions WMF use have a banner on them that we use them. Most anyone can create an extension, and many are only used on private wikis. You can check any specific wiki by going to Special:Version. — xaosflux Talk 02:34, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, I know that. I wanted a way to do the contrary of that. To show in which wikis is a certain extension used. Actually, I just wanted to see somewhere the extension at work, to understand better how it works before opening a discussion in our village pump, if we want to activate that or not. Since once we activate it, there's no way to deactivate it without asking at the Phabricator again for help. But apparently there's no escaping from that. :P - Klein Muçi (talk) 02:41, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi: also keep in mind, that if no WMF wiki is running an extension you may not be allowed to request it; basically if there isn't a WMF team that will support it they are unlikely to activate one in production. Some could be tested on the beta cluster first. — xaosflux Talk 04:00, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi: Stumbled in to say WikiApiary has information on what MediaWiki sites use a given extension, even those outside the WMF clusters. As an example https://wikiapiary.com/wiki/Extension:Echo shows the wikis which use mw:Extension:Echo. — Wug·a·po·des​ 04:18, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: the extensions I was interested in were the MultiBoilerplate extension and the Contribution Scores extension. The first one for the Albanian Wikiquote since we've been searching for quite some time for a similar thing. I remember asking you some time ago and if I'm not wrong, you were the one to tell me that what I was looking for was a boilerplate/preloaded text. And the second one for SqWiki, since we're looking for ways to encourage more users to be on the "usuals specter". Some users even suggested that we can send the top contributors of the month/year some congratulation emails with some stats about their articles and their work in general if things worked fine on that direction. At that time we were thinking of utilizing any of the tools we already had or maybe to try for a new gadget but this extension looked good enough on its own so I was thinking of proposing it for a discussion to see how the community reacts on it.
If the community agrees to them, I plan on asking on the Phabricator for their activation while also explaining my rationale for their need (more or less what I wrote above). If they disagree, I guess we'll accept that decision. But my past experiences on asking for extensions being enabled for SqQuote/SqWiki have gone fairly well to be honest.
@Wugapodes: thank you a lot! Can you help me locate a wiki where I can see the MultiBoilerplate extension at work? I'm having difficulties doing that since most personal wikis don't allow page creations without being registered first. - Klein Muçi (talk) 04:34, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
Not sure I can be of much more help. For contribution scores, you can see an example at This game of thrones wiki. For MultiBoilerplate, Xaosflux's suggestion of seeing if you can get it tested on the Beta cluster may be your best option unless you want to set up your own testing environment. — Wug·a·po·des​ 04:56, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
Thank you! :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 17:07, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Better than you

Finally! Took me long enough — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jodyemerson13 (talk • contribs) 14:01, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 27 January 2020

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:10, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

edit conflict

Hi. I hope you are doing well.
Recently I edited a talk page a few times which has/had very high edit history, but I didnt have any edit conflits. Something going on with the updates to wiki software? —usernamekiran (talk) 08:40, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

@Usernamekiran: you could have gotten lucky, or perhaps you and the other editor were both using section editing - there is some conflict avoidance when only sections are being edited. — xaosflux Talk 12:55, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
yup. You are right. Got ec on the same page the next day. And by the way, I was also curious about the "thanks" thing Xeno discussed above. Thanks for explaining it. See you around :) —usernamekiran (talk) 21:22, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

BLPNB request

Hi @Xaosflux:, would you be able to take a look at the BLP noticeboard please? Thank you! Jp7311 (talk) 13:05, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi @Jp7311:, I don't normally patrol that noticeboard as it isn't one of my stronger skills - with the exception if there is something that requires suppression. If you see something that needs immediate removal under the WP:oversight policy, please let us know by emailing us with this form and someone will work on it right away. For other matters, it may take some time. Thank you, — xaosflux Talk 14:23, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-05

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

Problems

  • Some mobile diffs have problems. A couple of buttons are not shown. Structured data diffs on Commons are confusing. The developers are working on fixing it. [10][11]
  • Administrators on wikis that use Structured Discussions can't move discussion pages. This is a bug. The developers are working on fixing it. [12]

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

  • There is JavaScript code on Special:Undelete for administrators that makes it possible to automatically select multiple checkboxes by holding the "Shift" key and clicking. This code is also loaded by accident on other special pages and on articles. This makes pages slower to load. This will be fixed. If you know of other special pages where this is useful please tell the developers at phab:T232688.

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

18:53, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Where's my reply on Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/New page reviewer?

NASCARfan0548 ↗ 00:12, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

@NASCARfan0548: I'm sorry I'm not sure what you are talking about, I don't see anything on that page that would be waiting for me? — xaosflux Talk 00:14, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

I'm talking about this edit. NASCARfan0548 ↗ 00:16, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

@NASCARfan0548: an admin will get to it, those are normally cleared within a few days. — xaosflux Talk 00:32, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello

Hi Lettymoney (talk) 10:48, 28 January 2020 (UTC) "Hi. — xaosflux Talk 11:45, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

Mail Notice

Hello, Xaosflux. 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.

Celestina007 (talk) 19:12, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

Oh my! Thank you so much for swift response.Celestina007 (talk) 19:49, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

Partial Blocks question

Hi Xaosflux. Quick question about this: Is it possible to use this to rangeblock an IP on a set of articles? For example, blocking IP range 123.456.xxx.xxx from editing all the pages in, say, Category:Polish female cyclists? Thanks. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 17:28, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

@Lugnuts: yes and no. It is possible to apply partial blocks to ranges (e.g. testwiki:Special:Redirect/logid/232809). Partial blocks do not support "pages in a category" as something you can block someone from (not yet at least), it can be applied to a list of pages and/or entire namespaces. — xaosflux Talk 18:42, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification. Lugnuts Fire Walk with Me 18:50, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

Categories

It's not about what I think. It's Wikipedia policy that all articles must be included in at least one real, directly declared content category, and that artificially transcluded "stub" categories do not count as categorization for the purposes of avoiding that requirement. Stub categories group articles by maintenance status, not by characteristics of the topic, and they disappear from the article as soon as it has been expanded enough to cause the removal of the stub template — so they don't make an article properly categorized by themselves, if it doesn't have at least one permanent category on it too. So it's not about me; it's about the rules. Bearcat (talk) 00:21, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

@Bearcat: yes, sorry I was a little bit miffed there and I think I started a much more cordial conversation here: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Stub_sorting#Template:Uncategorized_stub. Although you are referencing something else I'm a bit lost on - can you please give me the link to which policy requires this? — xaosflux Talk 00:23, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Quick question

Hey Xaosflux. Is there a way to add a .css page to a category ? as you're the best technical user on the project :P Thanx, - FlightTime (open channel) 17:43, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

@FlightTime: sure, just use css comments around it like this: /* [[Category:Test]] */. — xaosflux Talk 17:58, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
Great. Thank you very much. - FlightTime (open channel) 18:06, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Could I bother you once more. Could you please get me a copy of this template, I do not remember this discussion and would like to check it out. You can place it in my userspace here: User:FlightTime/Template:Acc Again thanx you for what you do. Cheers, - FlightTime (open channel) 21:59, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

@FlightTime:  Done if you don't need it anymore just mark for speedy delete. — xaosflux Talk 22:16, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
Again, thank you very much. - FlightTime (open channel) 22:18, 17 January 2020 (UTC)


Administrators' newsletter – February 2020

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

Guideline and policy news

  • Following a request for comment, partial blocks are now enabled on the English Wikipedia. This functionality allows administrators to block users from editing specific pages or namespaces rather than the entire site. A draft policy is being workshopped at Wikipedia:Partial blocks.
  • The request for comment seeking the community's sentiment for a binding desysop procedure closed with wide-spread support for an alternative desysoping procedure based on community input. No proposed process received consensus.

Technical news

  • Twinkle now supports partial blocking. There is a small checkbox that toggles the "partial" status for both blocks and templating. There is currently one template: {{uw-pblock}}.
  • When trying to move a page, if the target title already exists then a warning message is shown. The warning message will now include a link to the target title. [13]

Arbitration

  • Following a recent arbitration case, the Arbitration Committee reminded administrators that checkuser and oversight blocks must not be reversed or modified without prior consultation with the checkuser or oversighter who placed the block, the respective functionary team, or the Arbitration Committee.

Miscellaneous


Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:06, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Help

Hi, there is a weird text= at the upper left corner of the template/editnotice. see FooBar. Can you fix it? Can't seem to find the exact place that's causing this. Minorax (talk) 15:58, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

 Done looks like there was a syntax error at MediaWiki:Newarticletext - this should be fixed now, let me know if it is still an issue. — xaosflux Talk 16:45, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
Seems fine now. Thanks! Minorax (talk) 17:43, 2 February 2020 (UTC)

RHaworth

Following your notifications at User talk:RHaworth#sysop flag, do you think it is appropriate that {{administrator topicon}} and {{Online Ambassador topicon}} are still showing in Talk? Having given evidence of my interaction, it was the latter I was conscious of and had concerns over, even though it is showing as defunct when clicked-through. Thx.--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 10:29, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

@Rocknrollmancer: I normally only concern myself with removing links/boxes/etc that cause the use to be placed in to an administrator category. Online Ambassador was part of the long retired education extension, so I wouldn't worry about that one in the least. As far as the admin topicon, personally I think it should be removed if this user is still active, and you probably could just do it. — xaosflux Talk 12:32, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
OK, thanks, I'll keep an eye on it presently. The ambassador bit was obviously stale but now hypocritical IMO given that long-term admincond was a key aspect of the recent action. I noticed one admin made reference in Talk to an outside website content linked from the user's page - I knew about it and I'm pleased it was highlighted, but it's something I would not have done. Just continuing to be cautious. rgds,--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 13:06, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
And I see that User:Rocknrollmancer did indeed go ahead and remove the admin topicon from RHaworth's talk.[14] I completely disagree that either of you guys need have made it your business. User:RHaworth hasn't edited since 30 January. You couldn't afford him the dignity of removing the admin symbol himself? Perhaps politely asking him to, if you thought it was a horror to see it there? We're not machines, any of us, surely. Bishonen | talk 19:33, 3 February 2020 (UTC).
I would welcome absolutely anyone to revert Rock and allow Rhaworth to remove the topicon when he wants too, Sure he's no longer an admin but christ Rocknrollmancer was there really any rush to remove it ? ..... Leave the man alone jeez. –Davey2010Talk 19:40, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
@Bishonen: I routinely make a very neutral update, as I did here in Special:Diff/938652326 when removing a sysop flag (which I actually did in this case @ Special:Redirect/logid/105436426), so that users looking for admin help by category are not led astray; I didn't treat this case any different than any other time I've done that, such as in this recent update Special:Diff/933444697 for another user. The closest documentation to this process would be the "If necessary, the user's userpage should be edited to clarify the status — particularly if any categorization is involved" part of the admin policy for inactivity removals. I normally don't bother with components such as text that says "I am an administrator" / "I've been an admin since...", etc; or templates (such as the example being talked about here) that don't cause categorization inclusions and agree that the general community standards are that those are generally best left to the user to update when they want to. — xaosflux Talk 19:53, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
Yes, I'm sure that was all very neutral. I wasn't talking about that, but about your reply to Rocknrollmancer above, when he came here to ask about those topicons: "you probably could just do it." I doubt he would have removed it without your encouragement. Of course he might have focused a little more on your phrase "if this user is still active". Maybe he is active and maybe he isn't, it's only been four days, and I don't have the heart to discuss if that means "active", or not. Bishonen | talk 20:06, 3 February 2020 (UTC).
Ah OK Bishonen, I didn't really mean to be encouraging there, and showed how I didn't actually do that type of edit despite any personal opinion. This is a wiki of course and if someone thinks an edit will improve the project I'm not usually one to argue with them unless I have a strong opinion, which I don't really in this matter. — xaosflux Talk 20:17, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
Apologies for you getting the backlash here Xaos.--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 23:52, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
  • @Flux, Zilla, Davey2010 do you think it would be okay if I undo the edit? Roger has not been inactive for more than an year, not impersonating someone else, nor pretending to be an admin. One can ask him to remove it, after he resumes editing, and yet does not do it himself. I would have done it directly, but cant because of this edit. —usernamekiran (talk) 12:42, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
@Usernamekiran: I'm staying out of this, and so long as it isn't causing a categorization issue suggest that everyone else just leaves it be for now. — xaosflux Talk 12:45, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
nevermind. The sonnet guy did it already. —usernamekiran (talk) 12:46, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-06

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

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 February. It will be on all wikis from 6 February (calendar).

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

20:05, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

can you remind me (or, do it yourself if it's easier)

There's a way to force everyone's cache to refresh on a certain page, isn't there? Your change to the main page just now made it look very broken until I purged my cache. Is everyone going to have to do that, or is there a way to force it to happen for everyone? Otherwise (unless it just happened to me) I expect a lot of reports at Talk:Main Page. --Floquenbeam (talk) 00:41, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

@Floquenbeam: normally the cache clearing is automatic, my change was a failure and I reverted it - you may have just caught it in the middle. — xaosflux Talk 00:43, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
Yes, looking at timestamps, I think you reverted back between when I first saw the page, and when I purged the cache. When I wrote the above, I didn't know it had been reverted. I'm useless at such things, so I'll just say good luck and bow out. --Floquenbeam (talk) 00:44, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
@Floquenbeam: thank you for confirming the timeline, and for letting me know! This is going to require some review before another attempt. — xaosflux Talk 00:46, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
I just looked at it about (1:00) UTC still looks weird. Purging the cache doesn't work. ~~ CAPTAIN MEDUSAtalk 01:13, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
@CAPTAIN MEDUSA: what skin are you using? Does it look normal like this? — xaosflux Talk 02:00, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
I am using the Vector skin. But it doesn't look normal like this [16]. ~~ CAPTAIN MEDUSAtalk 02:15, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
@CAPTAIN MEDUSA: can you take a screenshot please? It will be rolled back soon and a before-after screen shot would be helpful. — xaosflux Talk 02:35, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
[17]. ~~ CAPTAIN MEDUSAtalk 02:58, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
@CAPTAIN MEDUSA: thank you, that helped. You are seeing the "responsive" nature of the main page, it kicks in as your monitor resolution gets narrower. If you have the option to make your window wider you should see it change as you stretch it wider than about. See follow up at Talk:Main_Page#Next_steps. — xaosflux Talk 04:15, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

important: please don't roll back main page changes

I am sorry we missed each other multiple times today.

I'm running some tests to check the main page special casing can indeed be turned off. Please do not rollback as doing so may break mobile view. I've left a suggested fix for the Monobook issue. None of these issues reported so far seem urgent enough to warrant a full rollback. Please ping me here to confirm you have seen this message to reduce my anxiety levels! Jdlrobson (talk) 02:39, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

@Jdlrobson: please join #wikipedia-en-MP. — xaosflux Talk 02:44, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
any plans to try this again (scoped to minerva?) Jdlrobson (talk) 08:47, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
@Jdlrobson: so yes, we should try again, do have code ready for minerva only? We still need to have a good explanation ready, what the benefits are (primarily that editors will be able to control the mobile domain page content) and what the expected impact to any one else will be (editors that picked minerva skin as their normal skin should get the minerva experience) - but what is expected for normal logged out mobile users that then click on desktop view? Will they get the normal reader view that vector readers see? — xaosflux Talk 14:00, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

Image without license

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Tech News: 2020-07

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

Recent changes

Problems

  • There was a problem with the new MediaWiki version last week. It deleted some messages by accident. The new version was late because it was stopped to fix things. [19]

Changes later this week

  • Advanced item The MediaWiki action API is used by various tools like bots and gadgets. Some error codes will change. Some parameter values that do not follow the standard will no longer work. [20]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 11 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 12 February. It will be on all wikis from 13 February (calendar).

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

19:12, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-08

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

Recent changes

Changes later this week

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

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

16:17, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Protection due to "repeat" IP "vandalism"

Hey there Xaosflux, it's your everyday anon. I noticed that you indefinitely semi-protected Wikipedia:Bureaucrats/Message list. First off, this is definitely for the better, and I was honestly surprised that it wasn't originally protected. In fact, because only sysops would ever need to edit the list, I'm surprised it isn't fully protected. Regardless, I digress. I am only commenting here because:

  1. This IP range had been blocked up until today, and I decided to scan Special:Contributions/204.110.220.0/24 for vandalism until I noticed my edit to the aforementioned list and your protection.
  2. I don't believe that your automated response was appropriate for the situation. For one, I was the only IP user who edited the page since 2016, so I wouldn't consider that page (which could debatably be labeled obscure in the Wikipedia namespace, for tenses and purposes of "vandalism"). The edit came about because I was unaware that simply clicking the button to remove a bureaucrat's name would instantaneously activate the JavaScript to make the edit without any confirmation from the performer. I was especially shocked that an IP account was able to make this edit. With that being said, I immediately undid my own edit, and left "mistake, apologies" in the edit summary. I was wondering how you would consider this to be vandalism, especially when the mistake was corrected in under a minute, and frankly am a bit upset that my edit was judged as such.

Maybe part of this stemmed from User:CLCStudent, who reverted my fix simply for the sake of reverting an IP. I assume their initial reaction was that I was a vandal, which I would admit is completely justifiable, as registered editors tend to be more trustworthy than IPs in terms of the amount of vandals from both user groups (registered and unregistered). Anyway, after CLCStudent realized that I was fixing my mistake, they reverted my original deletion etc. and then the page was protected. Maybe I was only here to anecdote, but I am still confused about whether you judged the original edit to be vandalism or whether it was just a byproduct of the automated edit summary produced when semi-protecting the page. Cheers, 204.110.220.136 (talk) 20:02, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

For replies, I wanted to inform that this is a Dynamic IP on a public computer, so a ping would not properly work in this circumstance. In addendum, this range encompasses many computers, so don't be surprised when you find many instances of disruptive editing in the range's contributions. 204.110.220.94 (talk) 20:06, 17 February 2020 (UTC)
Hi 204, if I understand your question, you would like an explanation for my log summery here: Special:Redirect/logid/100815767. As that was over half a year ago and a rather routine action my memory is not very strong about it. A quick review of that page history shows that every edit to that page by unregistered editors appears to be non-helpful, with the exception of .81's reversion of .208's edit; I don't think I intended for that log summary to be a direct vandalism complaint against any person using .208's at the time as I didn't bother to put a user talk page notice out. I likely only came across this by way of the edit summary from the most recent edit prior to the logged action via a watchlist entry. Hope that clears things up. You may want to review Wikipedia:Why create an account?, if for no other reason then it will help distance your own contributions from others that share your same internet space allocation. Best regards, — xaosflux Talk 20:31, 17 February 2020 (UTC)
Alright, thank you for the response. I decided to bring up this relic because I was taking ownership of both the .208 and .81 edits, and was wondering whether the first was considered vandalism. In hindsight, I guess it could be interpreted as such from circumstantial evidence of this range being used to vandalize, so it can be hard to distinguish AGF from those edits. With that being said, you have many other responsibilities to focus on throughout the project, so it would surely be hard to recall the specifics regarding the semi-protection of a page 6 months after it had occurred. I do appreciate your time to help me out, though, and this should be the last edit I make under this IP. However, I do have one last question: what would be the policy concerning CheckUser blocks and accused sockpuppetry for signing into a disruptive range? I don't want anybody to get the wrong idea if I were to do so in the future, and I don't want this conversation with me replying anonymously to be used as evidence of me trying to "deceive" someone, for that is not my intention. 204.110.220.65 (talk) 20:31, 18 February 2020 (UTC)
Hi 204..., you are welcome to edit from all the IP addresses you want to, as are others. The most relevant policy about this is Wikipedia:Sock puppetry. In a nutshell: where this use gets problematic is if you (an individual person) are using multiple account or addresses in a way that implies you are multiple actual people - that is, not being individually accountable and attributable for all of your actions. Lot of IP ranges are shared (especially from mobile phone providers) so simply using the same IP address as someone who made bad edits is not of itself a problem. One of the best ways to build up a positive reputation is to create a free account and use that for all of your contributions, it will help delineate your actions from others that happen to share the same underlying IP address. Best regards, — xaosflux Talk 21:02, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Bureaucrat chat for RFA - Money emoji

I've opened a bureaucrat chat for the current RfA. Your input would be most appreciated at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Money emoji/Bureaucrat chat. Cheers, Primefac (talk) 15:01, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

February flowers
Alte Liebe

... on Handel's birthday, enjoy --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:43, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

Today's Alte Liebe became especially meaningful after yesterday's funeral. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:57, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Is there such a page?

Hi, can I pick your brains?

I have an SPI case I need to work through. It's a mix of on-wiki stuff and confidential off-wiki WP:OUTING stuff. Processing it as a wiki page, to get the benefits in being able to paste wiki material, and the off wiki links to develop the case would be ideal. BUT I'd live in fear of accidentally publishing the page, and screwing up hugely.

Is there a page, or a means of creating a page I can edit, but not save. That would allow me to use page preview to work efficiently, but not accidentally hit the publish button next door.

  • Admin protection wouldn't do it, I'd only be able to view source.
  • Titleblacklist won't do it. I have Template editor privs.
  • Edit filter won't do, as it would save the material in the EF log.

Any ideas? Thanks, Cabayi (talk) 14:24, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

@Cabayi: are you using the source editor or the visual editor? If using the source, do you still want the preview button? An hacky option may be to use a javascript that removes the button from a specific page such as User:Cabayi/Sandbox/Nosave. The publish button is wrapped in a span node with id wpSaveWidget. — xaosflux Talk 15:12, 23 February 2020 (UTC)
Great idea. I knew you'd be the right person to ask.
I use the source editor. And yes, I need the preview button, or else I've no way of having live links, wiki & external. Hacky is good. Unfortunately javascripting my way through the components of a wiki page isn't one of my skills. So, pretty please, could you, would you code it?
Don't worry if not. Now you've provided the idea I can farm it out at Wikipedia:User scripts/Requests. I'm sure there are other uses for a non-savable, preview-only page. Thanks a million either way. Cabayi (talk) 20:30, 23 February 2020 (UTC)
@Cabayi: there are lots of ways to go about this, but a simple way is below. Place this in your Special:MyPage/common.js or other more specific script location. This does have the drawback of executing on every page to see if the current page is the target page, but you probably won't notice it. Change line 5 to your page, case sensitive.
// Remove save from target page by [[User:Xaosflux]] - Released under [https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ CC0 1.0]
function no_save_on_special_sandbox()
{
	// Only for my nosave sandbox
	if (document.title.indexOf("Editing User:Xaosflux/sandbox/nosave") != -1)
	{
		var element = document.getElementById("wpSaveWidget");
		element.parentNode.removeChild(element);
	}
}
$(no_save_on_special_sandbox);
Best regards, — xaosflux Talk 03:03, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
I was thrown when the first edit (Create) still had the publish button, but subsequent edits work brilliantly. Just what I needed. Thank you very much. Cabayi (talk) 05:20, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
Good to hear Cabayi, line 5 is looking for that exact phrase and creates are different as well, if you make sections check them carefully to see if it is also catching section edits. To easily turn it on and off you can just put "//" before the lines to make them comments (for very easy only need to do that on the very last line). — xaosflux Talk 12:23, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
But I can't edit sections. To do that I'd have to save a copy with sections in, and I can't do that any more. ☺ Cabayi (talk) 12:37, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-09

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

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

  • There will be a reply button after each post on a talk page if you want one. This will soon be a beta feature on the Arabic, French, Dutch and Hungarian Wikipedias. You will have to turn it on if you want to use it. It will come to more wikis later. You can test the reply button. It was briefly shown earlier than planned by mistake on the four first wikis last week.

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

21:00, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

A question about an editnotice

I am a little unsure about the wording "on the target page" in Template:Editnotices/Page/Wikipedia:Interface administrators' noticeboard. By definition, if someone is entering a speedy deletion request at the noticeboard that's because they can't edit the target page. I think that line should be cut but I wanted to know if there is a reason for its existence. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:54, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

@Jo-Jo Eumerus: that doesn't have any special tech meaning, feel free to edit it all you want :) I think at the time people were putting CSD notes at AN instead of just tagging them a bunch. — xaosflux Talk 12:45, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
I see. I've changed it so that it only refers to the associated talk page. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 12:47, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Protected categories

Hi xaosflux!

  1. I am letting you know that I adjusted the protection level of some categories (e.g. Category:User talk pages with Uw-advert3 notices) which you also changed last year. Based on your edit summaries, I don't think you will have a problem with this. Those categories have never been vandalised.
  2. It occured to me that protecting a category puts it in a relevant protection category (e.g. Category:Wikipedia fully protected pages). However this then implies that all pages in the first category are protected, which is obviously incorrect. A flaw in the software?
  3. We are having a discussion at Module talk:Protection banner about fixing the categorisation of some template-protected pages. This is how I originally ran into the categories in point 1, because they seem to be miscategorised. If you can assist with this in some way, please head over there.

Thanks — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:41, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 1 March 2020

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:47, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

about Henry425

I don't know how to make a block request so I write here. user:헨리 램, he is Henry425.

[23] Plese check here. --스위스 육군 (talk) 09:35, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

@스위스 육군: I can't do anything about kowiki, you would have to ask one of their admins (w:ko:Special:ListUsers/sysop). — xaosflux Talk 12:41, 2 March 2020 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: You did not understand me. User:헨리 램 is the same account as User:Henry425. --스위스 육군 (talk) 12:45, 2 March 2020 (UTC)
@스위스 육군: OK, that 2nd account is globally locked, to report for more global locks you must ask here: meta:Steward_requests/Global#Requests_for_global_(un)lock_and_(un)hiding. — xaosflux Talk 12:49, 2 March 2020 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: The reason I requested this was because during the multi-account check on Henry425 in Korean Wikipedia, only that account was not blocked. Thank you. --스위스 육군 (talk) 12:52, 2 March 2020 (UTC)
Please block 헨리 램 account. ([24]) --스위스 육군 (talk) 12:54, 2 March 2020 (UTC)
@스위스 육군: Since that account has never edited here, we have no need for a local block. But if it is evading the global lock, it should also be globally locked and the stewards team would need to do that. Also, I don't normally handle block requests directly, if there is an urgent need to block an account due to active disruption, please post at WP:AIV - else you can start a discussion at WP:AN/I. — xaosflux Talk 12:57, 2 March 2020 (UTC)
It is a multiple account of Henry425, so he just blocked the request. --스위스 육군 (talk) 12:59, 2 March 2020 (UTC)
What ever you are reporting about 헨리_램 is not currently a problem for the English Wikipedia, so there is nothing else I can help you with here. If you are unable to report to the stewards on meta-wiki page, you can email them here: meta:Special:Contact/Stewards, or direct to: stewards@wikimedia.org. Best luck, — xaosflux Talk 14:27, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2020

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

Guideline and policy news

  • Following an RfC, the blocking policy was changed to state that sysops must not undo or alter CheckUser or Oversight blocks, rather than should not.
  • A request for comment confirmed that sandboxes of established but inactive editors may not be blanked due solely to inactivity.

Technical news

  • Following a discussion, Twinkle's default CSD behavior will soon change, most likely this week. After the change, Twinkle will default to "tagging mode" if there is no CSD tag present, and default to "deletion mode" if there is a CSD tag present. You will be able to always default to "deletion mode" (the current behavior) using your Twinkle preferences.

Miscellaneous


Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:21, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-10

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

Problems

  • Readers who were not logged in briefly saw the interface in a language decided by their browser. It should normally be in the language of the wiki. This happened for a short period of time last week. This was because of a bug. [25]

Changes later this week

  • If you forget your password you can ask for a new one to be sent to your email address. You need to know your email address or your username. You will now be able to choose that you need to enter both your email address and your username. This will be a preference. This is to get fewer password reset emails someone else asked for. [26]
  • When you asked for a new password you could see if the username didn't exist on Special:PasswordReset. Now the page will show the username you entered and tell you an email has been sent if the username exists. This is for better security. [27]
  • On Special:WhatLinksHere you can see what other pages link to a page. You can see if the link is from a redirect. You can now see which section the redirect links to. [28]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 3 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 4 March. It will be on all wikis from 5 March (calendar).

Future changes

  • The developers are working on a new interface to solve edit conflicts on talk pages. You can give feedback. [29]
  • There is a vote on the creation of a new user group called abuse filter manager. The vote runs from March 1 to March 31 on Meta.
  • Advanced item wgMFSpecialCaseMainPage was used for the mobile site. It was deprecated in 2017. It will stop working in April. Wikis should see if they use it. If they do they should fix it. You can read more and ask for help. This affects 183 wikis. There is a list. [30]

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

00:36, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-11

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

Recent changes

  • There is a new search word called articletopic. You can use it to search for articles on a specific topic. It is available on the Arabic, Czech, English and Vietnamese Wikipedias. It will come to more Wikipedias soon. [31][32][33]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 10 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 11 March. It will be on all wikis from 12 March (calendar).

Future changes

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

17:15, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

mail

Hello, Xaosflux. 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.

Schazjmd (talk) 21:24, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Thumbs up icon thanks Schazjmd (talk) 23:29, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

You've got mail (ME)

Hello, Xaosflux. 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. Money emoji💵Talk💸Help out at CCI! 00:32, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
@Money emoji: replied. (Please ping me here if you need to reply by email, or use wikimail.) — xaosflux Talk 01:08, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
Nah, no need for follow up, thanks. Money emoji💵Talk💸Help out at CCI! 01:21, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

User talk

Hi Xaosflux, I can't find the user talk pages of User: anywhere (old name or new name). Has something gone wrong during the rename, or are they at a location I'm not looking at? Fram (talk) 08:19, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

(watching:) He vanished an extremely vanishing way. Sad. I wanted to look up what I wrote to him in 2019. Not even a trace of that edit, unless I'm missing something. Sad. Sad. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:18, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
adding: if you look for the new name you get at least contribs - again not all, I assume, not to the deleted pages? - but I'm afraid it would be considered outing to mentiont that name onwiki. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:22, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
@Fram and Gerda Arendt: that user has retired and the WP:OS team has been involved due to OS issues I can't discuss; everything was with full cooperation of the retiring person though - they were not railroaded by the cabal (just to head off any conspiracy theories!). — xaosflux Talk 11:42, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
I didn't think of conspiracy, but not being able to revisit what I told them for Precious was disappointing, to put it mildly. Could you perhaps find out that little bit and send me an email? I will keep it to myself. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:51, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
Deleting talk pages is not up to the vanished user though, so their cooperation is not really a factor. I can't imagine that all archives or all versions of the page had to be oversighted. Seems like serious overkill and a rather dubious precedent (just like removing their old username from here is rather bizarre as well, looks a lot like burying your head in the sand). Fram (talk) 11:52, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
Die Fliege
Would mentioning the new name be outing? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:08, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
Could the link to a deleted page at least be red?? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:10, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
@Gerda Arendt and Fram: I'm sorry I can't be more transparent, there are human safety factors involved. I did not take actions in a vacuum and in this case if you want to "appeal" or ask for additional review of any of my logged actions, I'll have to refer you to the OS team (Special:EmailUser/Oversight) or to ArbCom by email. Many of the pages have "only" been deleted, not also oversighted - but it is under the same review umbrella. Regarding "talk archives" - I did look at these, and they were of the "copy paste" style, so no actual edits were lost there. I agree that deleting a user talk page is exceptional, but this is an exceptional situation. The "new name" isn't a big secret, it is a "Renamed user...." type of name, indicating that the account is no longer going to be contributing on any project. It is not forbidden to mention the old or new name, but it it related to external issues and in this discussion we all know what pages we are talking about so it isn't really necessary to keep it on the live version if it can at all help the external problem. Gerda Arendt your "precious" talk edit looked to be a boilerplate template about the anniversary of an entry linked to Wikipedia:WikiProject Quality Article Improvement/Precious. — xaosflux Talk 13:37, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
Thanks. No, I don't plan to take this any further, you don't strike me as the kind of editor who does things for nefarious reasons, and I have no reason to doubt your version. I'm in general not comfortable with the deletion of user talk pages (plus initially it could have been that you simply had made a mistake), but if this case is the exception to the rule, then that's fine by me. Just keeping you on your toes ;-) Fram (talk) 13:46, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
@Fram: thanks for the note, I didn't like it either. If this editor ever wanted to resurrect their account I'd be on the front of the argument to undelete as well. — xaosflux Talk 14:28, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for explaining. Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts. It wasn't a reminder on 20 Feb 2019 but the initial entry to which the name should link, normally. For others who vanished, I give the diff. (Until yesterday, I believed that I can get old and forgetful but Wikipedia will remember. I see now that what I did can simply be taken away without the transparency of saying: there was an edit but it was oversighted.) I could go and look up what possibly made me write what a year ago (I know that I reminded him just now), but I am just too sad to do that. The unanswered question remains: could the links to the deleted pages be an honest red? I'll make it red in Die Fliege and the Precious archive. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:58, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
@Gerda Arendt: I'm afraid I'm not quite understanding what it is you need would you mind dropping me an email here: Special:EmailUser/Xaosflux with the details? It will probably be about 12 hours before I can review it though. — xaosflux Talk 14:28, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
Thank you for the offer, someone sent me the email I wanted. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:32, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
About the blue links leading to a load of read information, I will complain no more, which doesn't mean I think it's good. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:34, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
@Gerda Arendt: that is the part I'm most confused about, where are you seeing that? — xaosflux Talk 17:26, 11 March 2020 (UTC)
I don't see it any more. Cash problem perhaps? - Anyway, off your toes ;) - todayÄs music for you. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:32, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-12

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

Recent changes

  • Advanced item There is a new API module for changing the content model of existing pages. Use action=changecontentmodel to specify the new model. You can read the documentation on mediawiki.org. [35]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 17 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 18 March. It will be on all wikis from 19 March (calendar).

Future changes

  • If you edit a page at the same time as someone else you can get an edit conflict. There is a new two-column interface to make it easier to solve this. It will soon be active by default on the German, Arabic, and Farsi Wikipedias. It will be on by default on more wikis within the next months. You will be able to opt out of the new interface. [36][37]
  • You can see a proposed design for replying to comments in an easier way.

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

21:14, 16 March 2020 (UTC)

Unblock requests

Xaosflux/sandbox84 has multiple unblock requests on it, so it's showing up in Category:Requests_for_unblock as an open unblock for us to review. Mind removing those test requests? :) --Yamla (talk) 10:21, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

 Done thanks for the note @Yamla:. — xaosflux Talk 11:28, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

VP - Response

Hey! It's three in the morning here but if its okay I'll get back to you tomorrow on the VP with a clear mind and some sleep? Seddon (WMF) (talk) 02:59, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

@Seddon (WMF): certainly - that is mostly informative, but will stifle the community efforts to put up a site notice, since it will be somewhat redundant with the CN for readers. — xaosflux Talk 03:38, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: - is there a conversation about putting a site notice up? Is there any reason we wouldn't want to use CN. Sitenotice is far less optimal and interacts with CN in a number of weird ways and doesn't work on mobile to the best of my knowledge? Seddon (WMF) (talk) 11:03, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
@Seddon (WMF): it was just in the beginning, and would have required large consensus - but we did have a suggestion from Jimbo to link to quality information on every page of Wikipedia about the current covid-19 crisis. So far, we added an navigation banner to the top of T:ITN which is on main page for all users. As to why not for the CN - I think it depends on javascript to get out there. As far as the CN goes, personally I think it is fine in the "Here is what the WMF is doing" aspect that other places are doing, but since it is a also a thanks to contributors I don't think it should be hidden from logged in editors either. As this was (so far it appears) only being pushed out to Wikipedia,English - a head's up here would have been nice, but most of us will respect that it isn't required. — xaosflux Talk 11:24, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-13

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

Problems

  • Some development will be slower than planned. This is because of the current pandemic. You can see the new deployment guidelines. This is to avoid risks when some persons could be unavailable.
  • There was a problem when adding interwiki links. The tool you use to add interwiki links could suggest the wrong project to link to. This has now been fixed. [38][39]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

  • There is a project to make editing easier for newcomers. The developers are trying to understand what initiatives different Wikipedias have to welcome newcomers. They also want to know which templates are often used for maintenance activities. You can help this project by checking if your wiki's pages are listed on Wikidata.

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

17:08, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 29 March 2020

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 17:43, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-14

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

Recent changes

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 31 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 1 April. It will be on all wikis from 2 April (calendar).

Future changes

  • The video player will change to be simpler and more modern. The current beta feature will become the video player for everyone. The old player will be removed. [41]
  • There is a project to make templates easier to use. The next few weeks the developers will present ideas on the project page. You can watch that page if you are interested in giving feedback. [42]

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

17:26, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Disclaimer for a upcoming... thing

Hey Xaosflux! In just over 24 hours from now, we will be enterring the month of April. This is might be a relatively unknown fact, but supposedly, certain events happen on the first day of the upcoming month that are brought about by unknown causes. Now, I wanted to let you know that there have been reports that you may or may not be the target of a special... something. Without giving away anything in particular, I was curious whether you would be willing to participate in this unique circumstance. If it would be a bother, then I can cause these rumors to magically dissipate. But, if you were alright with it, then the plan will continue. I promise that anything that might happen will not be too large of an inconvenience for you. Have a good March, Utopes (talk / cont) 22:42, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

@Utopes: I'm no fool, but am a good sport so sure. Only I can't promise I'll actually be on a lot tomorrow. — xaosflux Talk 22:49, 30 March 2020 (UTC)
I wanted to drop by and say thank you for participating in the April Fools RfA. The userfied archive is here at User:Utopes/Requests for adminship/Xaosflux 2. I also wanted to say thank you for your effort and dedication that you've put into the project; I wanted to nominate a user where there was no question that they were an esteemed and well known bureaucrat, and we appreciate your tireless work. (My first draft was pretty wordy in hindsight, but it has been revised). Lastly, thank you again playing along, and hopefully you understood where I was going with the joke. Utopes (talk / cont) 00:31, 2 April 2020 (UTC)
I don't know, going by this and this, things got pretty crazy this year. There were just 2 or 3 editors who got out-of-hand who were blocked, one just temporarily. Liz Read! Talk! 01:44, 2 April 2020 (UTC)


Edit filters

Xaosflux, hello! :)

How have you been? Long time without speaking. :)

These days I've been studying a little the edit filters EnWiki has. Our list of pages that need to be patrolled in SqWiki (and new pages that need to get reviewed) has grown outside of our control and since we saw 75% of it was vandalism, we thought the edit filter could help us a lot in the future, when we fix this situation (although we've had problems with its backlog for many months now).

I thought of importing some "generic" filters already from EnWiki and maybe tweak some of them along the way (like translating some vulgar words and stuff). I started with page blanking as a pretty generic vandalism but I found out there are different "versions" of it regarding namespaces. I was thinking if you could help me create one used for every namespace? So, one filter that would stop IPs and new users from blanking articles, categories, Wikiquote pages, help pages, templates, talk pages and stuff (maybe only their own). I was also wondering why EnWiki hasn't yet created something like this and I thought maybe there is a reason for it (any false positive I'm not thinking of).

If you have spare time to help me on this project, maybe I can ask for help on some other filters too after the blanking one. I'm just learning to deal with the regex syntax and I would appreciate some help on the way. I'll be trying the new changes at Wikiquote because usually (unfortunately) there are only 2 users editing per month there and I wouldn't cause too much problems. If the filters seem to work fine, I plan on importing them on SqWiki.

If you don't have time, it's okay. Also, you can tell me to stop anytime. There are over one thousand filters there and I have to import as much as possible (those that are needed in our community) to automatize as much as possible the fight against vandalism because the unpatrolled pages have become a real big problem in our community since there are articles waiting for almost 1 year now. People have started to lose faith their edits will ever make it into articles and we really don't have the human resources to deal with it how we should. So we're even prepared to have some false positives on our filters just to make them work because we're losing too much like this anyway. - Klein Muçi (talk) 17:28, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi: hi there, I've been quite busy lately but can point you in a little bit of a direction. If you want to try to stop blanking everywhere you can model on Special:AbuseFilter/3 with a few tweaks, perhaps like this:
!("confirmed" in user_groups) &
(
  new_size < 50 & old_size > 300 |
  new_size/(old_size + 1) < 0.1
)
The abusefilter extension takes a lot of tweaking to run smoothly, so what you would want to do is create a filter in monitor only mode for a while, and see if it is effective, and even when you are ready to start enforcement you could start with "warning" before "disallowing" and see if that is enough to dissuade problems. — xaosflux Talk 18:25, 31 March 2020 (UTC)
Thank you for the advice! So, if I understood it correctly, basically what you wrote should be the entire code? Because AF/3 really doesn't have much besides those lines. Only 1 line more. :P - Klein Muçi (talk) 22:14, 31 March 2020 (UTC)
Apparently, yes. I just used it like that and it works like it should. Can you help me with the AF/29 New user removing speedy deletion templates? Our deletion templates are called {{grise}} and {{delete}}, the later being a redirect to the first one. Apart from that I think I need help with only 3 more filters and I'm done. I finished checking the whole list. :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 23:20, 31 March 2020 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi:} sorry I don't have time to work on this right now. You can try some out without enforcement, but keep in mind that if you make a filter that triggers on everythign you will overload the filter on a project - so watch that anything doesn't get too many hits right away. For more help you can ask at WP:EFN. — xaosflux Talk 14:10, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
Don't worry. :) I'll try to ask someone else for help for the remaining 4 filters. Thank you anyway! :)) - Klein Muçi (talk) 18:10, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2020

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

Guideline and policy news

  • There is an ongoing request for comment to streamline the source deprecation and blacklisting process.

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • The WMF has begun a pilot report of the pages most visited through various social media platforms to help with anti-vandalism and anti-disinformation efforts. The report is updated daily and will be available through the end of May.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:00, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

nominornewtalk

I keep meaning to find out, and every time I go to look I give up, and you're pretty involved in this stuff... is there a way to ignore nominornewtalk so that when lcsigma etc archives talk page posts it actually turns up in my emails/watchlist? Primefac (talk) 13:47, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

@Primefac: you can't ignore nominornewtalk, the only impact of which is if the webui should be triggered. You can not ignore 'minor' overall for watchlists (Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-watchlist). — xaosflux Talk 14:08, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
That's unfortunate. I knew how to (and currently do) have the "hide minor" disabled on my preferences, just wish that worked for nominornewtalk as well. I guess I'll have to hit someone up for a user script... Thanks anyway! Primefac (talk) 14:19, 1 April 2020 (UTC)
@Primefac: (talk page stalker) if you file a request on phabricator and get support for it, the coding should be pretty simple to add a new preference to get alerts even from users with nominornewtalk (I'd be willing to write the code) --DannyS712 (talk) 22:22, 2 April 2020 (UTC)

Quick question (css)

Hey, Xaosflux! Sorry to bother you again. I was curious about something I haven't been able to sort out myself for many days. When you try to edit a protected page, you get a warning in a red background. I've tried to edit the MediaWiki:Protectedpagewarning system message but that only changes the text in there, not the red background. Even if you put colors in that system message, the new colors get put inside the red background. Where is that red background coming from? Is there anyway to change it? I guess maybe in the Common.css file but not sure where to check for (or how I would be able to change it). I checked in EnWiki and that's probably coming from some lines there related to the fmbox module but the same thing happens in SqQuote too and we haven't got that module. I'm a bit lost here. Maybe I'm wrong on my deductions. :/ - Klein Muçi (talk) 15:28, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi: yes that would be from styling, generally in your Mediawiki:common.css. The box will have several "class" elements on it, you can inspect the source to see them. Here on enwiki for example, the protected warning box has these classes: warningbox, mw-warning-with-logexcerpt, and mw-content-ltr, that second one is getting styling from this section of our common.css:
/* Div based "warning" style fmbox messages. */
div.mw-warning-with-logexcerpt,
div.mw-lag-warn-high,
div.mw-cascadeprotectedwarning,
div#mw-protect-cascadeon,
div.titleblacklist-warning,
div.locked-warning {
	clear: both;
	margin: 0.2em 0;
	border: 1px solid #bb7070;
	background-color: #ffdbdb;
	padding: 0.25em 0.9em;
	box-sizing: border-box;
}
Hope that helps? — xaosflux Talk 15:39, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
Thank you so much for your always quick responses! Unfortunately, it doesn't help me that much because I still can't practically find it where it is coming from in our css file but at least I'm sure it is from there now. Do you have the time to give our file a quick look to see if you can locate it? If it takes time, leave it; I'll try to experiment with all the color codes there until I see a change. Unfortunately our Common JS and CSS files are a bit outdated, having been the same for roughly 10 years, so there may be strange things going on there. - Klein Muçi (talk) 15:52, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi: it is hard to troubleshoot without being able to see the problem, can try at sqq first - can you endorse the request at meta:Steward_requests/Permissions#Xaosflux@sqwikiquote? — xaosflux Talk 17:16, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
Oh, of course! I'm actually delighted you decided to take extra steps to help me. Doing that right now. I was messing with the code a bit now but still couldn't change it. - Klein Muçi (talk) 17:20, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Síansaksâ

Keyseadededen ianvareji antebuçeheskodemek rasširénijamejikta, obturatu gäñjäettägäsen išvalgytumëmedakahen šokieriksigon: fernlas geamantaneksen. Incrémenterezetägosen, colmadas žúfáekci berrogeidoit hemeretsejiksi. Zajčónkat reflèteraitaba fluidarta, allevieremmogot'ek Hägelessa sternudarihekmek. Retuidearásedu sänníttä'anekcidak kal'cïtelek. Rimuovendoi converdorset çroçtacilta, žačkattagak, çuítiáokadamak, kardečkopa sïbrigliandovissa putkicudadanehen. Sfalericista böiciden vólnomularstwögon, Mathaíovista rinwigorentesigatemek. Oítoheksi laffstengon çéngmiàninek fulminavissediskasen. Désambiguïseraisettisen manšec. Täbiğejimäk, protivobórstwovalagos, englišegäk'i nogajčyketa. Dicséredegen, 2001:14BB:431:D6:D5AD:50C9:A89B:993F (talk) 13:48, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Hi 993F, it looks like you are using a constructed language - but I don't understand it. If you need help here on the English Wikipedia, please repost in English. For assistance in another language you can try this page: Wikipedia:Local Embassy. — xaosflux Talk 14:35, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-15

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

Problems

  • There was a problem with user pages not being shown properly on desktop. This was because of a bug. It will soon be fixed. [43]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

  • MediaWiki will use a newer version of Unicode. Some characters that did not have an upper case equivalent before do now. Titles beginning with one of these characters will be moved. A list of these titles can be seen on Phabricator. The titles will be renamed by the user Maintenance script. This will start on 13 April 2020. You can rename them before this if you wish and the new title can be different from the one the script would rename it to. [44]

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

19:03, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-16

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

Recent changes

Problems

  • There was a problem with the Wikidata database last week. Some wikis went down for twenty minutes. Wikidata and other projects showed error messages. Interwiki links were not shown, some tools did not work and other problems. Some of this was fixed quickly. The developers are working on fixing the rest. [49][50][51]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from April 14. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from April 15. It will be on all wikis from April 16 (calendar).

Future changes

  • Some graphs have not worked on mobile. This will soon be fixed. [52]
  • The article tab on talk pages of redirects links to the target of the redirect. It could link to the redirect page itself instead. You can leave feedback on this.
  • For pages using syntax highlighting, the use of the deprecated <source> tag, as well as the use of the deprecated enclose parameter, will add tracking categories.

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

15:31, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

You've got mail!

Hello, Xaosflux. Please check your email; you've got mail!
Message added 18:21, 14 April 2020 (UTC). 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.

Interstellarity (talk) 18:21, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

@Interstellarity:}  Done (OS'd), also sent to e@... — xaosflux Talk 18:29, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
Thank you for handling this. Just a quick question, when you say e@, do you mean emergency email? Interstellarity (talk) 18:31, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
@Interstellarity: yes, I didn't want to divulge what you were talking about though - I sent them the link to the suppressed revision. — xaosflux Talk 18:34, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
Also, I found this page that was created by an IP user. I tagged it for speedy deletion because I didn't see any evidence they got your permission to create it. Interstellarity (talk) 18:36, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
@Interstellarity: hmm no idea what that was, and that's not my name :D I deleted it, thanks! — xaosflux Talk 19:41, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

Desktop improvements prototype

Hello, Xaosflux!

Thanks for taking the time to participate in the user feedback round for our desktop improvements prototype. This feedback is super valuable to us and is currently being used to determine our next steps. We have published a report gathering the main takeaways from the feedback and highlighting the changes we’ll make based on this feedback. Please take a look and give us your thoughts on the talk page of the report. To learn more about the project overall and the other features we’re planning on building in the future, check out the main project page.

SGrabarczuk (WMF) (talk) 22:34, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

Speedy deletion nomination of User:Basilica Manaoag

A tag has been placed on User:Basilica Manaoag requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section U5 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page appears to consist of writings, information, discussions, and/or activities not closely related to Wikipedia's goals. Please note that Wikipedia is not a free web hosting service. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, such pages may be deleted at any time.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator, or if you have already done so, you can place a request here. GPL93 (talk) 11:19, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

RevDel Ticket:2020041710001207

Thank you for your speedy assistance there, it was/is much appreciated! :) I have corrected my egregious mistake and uploaded the whole thing (corrected everything) back up to the page. :) Again, thanks! :) - Neutralhomer • Talk • 04:01 on April 17, 2020 (UTC) • #StayAtHome

Tech News: 2020-17

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

Tech News

  • The next issue of Tech News will be sent out on 4 May 2020.

Recent changes

  • Advanced item The small wiki toolkits is to help smaller wikis that need technical skills. They can learn and share technical skills. [53]
  • Advanced item Over-qualified CSS selectors in Wikimedia skins have been removed. div#content is now .mw-body. div.portal is now .portal. div#footer is now #footer. This is so the skins can use HTML5 elements. If your gadgets or user styles used them you will have to update them. [54]

Changes later this week

  • There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Future changes

  • Some things on the wikis might look weird or not work in Internet Explorer 8 in the future. Internet Explorer 8 was replaced in 2011. [55]
  • The font in the diffs will change. [56]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 April next week. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 April next week. It will be on all wikis from 30 April next week (calendar).

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

18:45, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Orphaned talk pages

Hello there! :)

I already deleted manually most of (if not all) the talk pages at SqQuote thanks to your quarry. Can you run it one more time for me (I'll start learning how to do that myself when I deal with SqWiki) so I know what I might have missed? User and sub pages included. - Klein Muçi (talk) 18:51, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

DB sync is usually overnight on that, hit me up tomorrow and I'll point you to the results! — xaosflux Talk 18:56, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
Roger that. :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 19:13, 21 April 2020 (UTC)
I also finished dealing with SqWiki yesterday so maybe tonight or maybe tomorrow would be a good idea to redo it for both? - Klein Muçi (talk) 08:57, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi:
  1. sqw: quarry:query/44155
  2. sqq: quarry:query/44379
— xaosflux Talk 15:56, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
Thank you! Since we're here, and I'm almost finished with the cleaning up process, may I ask you one bizarre question related to it? How about the "wrong" redirect pages? When someone has created a redirect page while moving an article (or another page) but it would have been better to delete it? Is there a way to track pages like these? I don't believe there is, isn't it? - Klein Muçi (talk) 18:06, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi: creating a redirect page when moving an article is the default behavior, and the only option for most non-administrators. Suppressing a redirect is possible, but there wouldn't be a good "programmatic" way to know if it was useful or not in most cases - that would be an editorial decision. — xaosflux Talk 21:53, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, that's what I thought. I was referring to cases like when you do an enormous typo (for example writing "tigeroin" instead of "tiger") that wouldn't serve as a redirect. But as I thought there's no easy way for dealing with those cases. Thank you! :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 22:03, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

History in my user talk deleted by RHaworth

I'm not sure how to go about doing this so if I am doing it wrong please let me know and tell me how I can do it correctly. RHaworth deleted some of my history in my user talk. He said it was because I was using Wikipedia as a web host. I will concede that I did that but I didn't know that was against any rules when I did it. I honestly thought that it was something you could do on your own user talk. I asked him if I could have some of it back and he restored it. I need the rest of it back. I'm not sure how long deletions stay in the system since this was in August but I figured that I would try to ask if it was possible to restore it. I won't keep the information on Wikipedia anymore but I do need it for personal reasons. So can I have the contents of the deleted history back if it is possible? Arjoccolenty (talk) 15:41, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

@Arjoccolenty: there are no deleted versions on your user_talk page, all revisions can be accessed via the page history. Your primary user page has many deletions, and it still appears that you are placing things on it that are outside of the userpage guidelines - for example, in this recent edit: Special:PermaLink/950804347, can you briefly summarize how this is helping to improve the encylopedia? — xaosflux Talk 16:15, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
Oh I'm sorry! I got it wrong. Not my user talk. I meant my actual user PAGE. I knew I was gonna mess up somehow. Even after all these years I'm.a bit dumb. Right here is what I am talking about. The pages in my history and I have to admit once again that when I was using my page for that, I didn't know it was against the rules until it got deleted. I didn't know there were guidelines and I thought the user page was like a sandbox I guess is the best way to explain it. I know now that its against the guidelines so I am not gonna do it again. I am just wondering if I can have the contents of the deleted pages back. Even if you can't restore them on Wikipedia, can you send them to me in an e-mail? None of what I was doing on my user page was helping Wikipedia because I thought it was another sandbox.

https://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=User%3AArjoccolenty Arjoccolenty (talk) 16:25, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

@Arjoccolenty: OK, I can send you the export of the history. Send me an email using Special:EmailUser/Xaosflux and I can reply with an attachment. I've deleted your userpage again, please carefully review WP:USERPAGE, especially the Wikipedia:User_pages#What_may_I_have_in_my_user_pages? section, prior to recreating that page again. — xaosflux Talk 18:19, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
I sent you my e-mail. What I need to know about my sandbox is I can put anything there right? THAT is what I think ended up confusing me since both pages I thought were mine so I could do anything I wanted with them. I know that there are rules to my talk page but on my sandbox can I do anything as long as it is within the rules? I never had anything deleted there but I'm wondering if that was pure luck. Arjoccolenty (talk) 20:53, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
@Arjoccolenty: I emailed you the export from that page. So as far as user space guidelines go: Your userpage which is User:Arjoccolenty should mostly just be used to introduce yourself. Its primary purpose is so that other editors can learn about you. Your user sandbox which is User:Arjoccolenty/sandbox can be used for things you are drafting for future inclusion, tests related to productive editing, etc. There are no places at all on Wikipedia that are appropriate for you to just store personal things that have nothing to do with improving the encyclopedia, we are not a web host. — xaosflux Talk 00:04, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

You've got mail (AR)

Hello, Xaosflux. 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. Arjoccolenty (talk) 17:40, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

My e-mails yesterday all were corrupted so I wasn't able to get the export. Can you send me the link again if possible? I also included an alternate e-mail account just in case this issue arises again. I am so sorry for bothering you with my stupid needs. Arjoccolenty (talk) 17:40, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

EDIT: No wait. Looks like I could get it back. Disregard this e-mail. Once again I'm sorry for bothering you. I know that I am taking a lot of time out of your busy schedule. That is my bad. Arjoccolenty (talk) 17:51, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
I did send it again, before I saw this - good to hear you are all set. — xaosflux Talk 21:51, 26 April 2020 (UTC)
If I need something else that was deleted due to breach of policy, I won't bother you. I will ask someone else. Arjoccolenty (talk) 12:21, 27 April 2020 (UTC)
@Arjoccolenty: you can usually request at least temporary undeletions at Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion. Best regards, — xaosflux Talk 14:37, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 April 2020

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:18, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Technical Barnstar
This for your hardworks on enhancing Wikipedia through technical works such as programming, bot building and approving, Village pump, etc. I appreciate your selfless service to the encyclopedia. You are a typical metapedian of our wiki. Thanks for helping others in technical area. Thank you for taking the time for this. Thank you! PATH SLOPU 07:45, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Admin's Barnstar
I think you deserve a barnstar for Special:Redirect/logid/100058795. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:08, 21 June 2019 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Barnstar of Diligence
I was going back through several bot-related discussions, some heated up, some less-so, and it struck me just how consistently reasonable, thoughtful, and well-articulated you were, as an editor, as a BAG member, and as a 'crat.

So here's a barnstar for that, because quality deserves recognition. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:27, 23 June 2019 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Original Barnstar
For your diligent effort to fill in Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2019/Candidates/Guide. In previous years, I've helped out with this part, but I didn't get the time to this year. Thanks for tirelessly working it through in a field of no less than two dozen candidates. Mz7 (talk) 01:17, 13 November 2019 (UTC)


A barnstar for you!

The Technical Barnstar
You deserve one of these methinks. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 12:40, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Edit filters (exclude namespaces)

Hey there! :)

Can you help me with a regex line to exclude one or more namespaces from one filter if I've set that filter to work in all namespaces? If you want, I can give you a practical example where I would like to use that. Thank you in advance! :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 17:37, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi: oh sure, whichproject/filter id is it, and which ns's would you like to exclude? A case list will prob be better than a regex, but it depends. — xaosflux Talk 18:49, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
Well, for example here to allow user talk pages. Maybe even user pages? Usually these two. The way we usually set up filters in SqWiki is to work in all namespaces because we have a lot of vandalism even on non mainspace pages. But user spaces need sometimes to be excluded from those as things are more lenient in those namespaces in certain aspects. So I would like to have that general knowledge because I might need it in different filters, the one above included. :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 18:56, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi: I excluded User/User talk for you in this change - you can add more ns #'s at the end of that expression if needed. To exclude only one namespace you could use a simpler condition. — xaosflux Talk 19:12, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
Oh, I didn't know you could edit those too. Thank you! Is the space before 2 needed or just a typo? Also, I'm guessing I can use that line with most of the other filters too no? - Klein Muçi (talk) 22:04, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi: I can edit EF on every project as an abuse filter maintainer, but may only do it for transparent technical reasons or on request of someone who can already edit them. That space is not strictly necessary, but is good for readability - that argument says if the first item is equal to any of the array of the subsequent items (x, a,b,c,d,e,f) - so it is pretty easy to use for a namespace filter. 2=user, 3=user_talk. You can use that anywhere, if you want to ONLY match a collection of namespaces just take out the "not" operator (!). — xaosflux Talk 22:10, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

I see. Thank you then! :)) - Klein Muçi (talk) 22:12, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Do you think I'm a reasonable candidate for a temporary Edit filter helper? I wanted to see some of the private filters on EnWiki to get them for SqWiki/SqQuote (can't really remember which one exactly now) and I was reading about the policy and... But I saw you didn't have a lot of users with that privilege so I'm not sure. - Klein Muçi (talk) 22:59, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
I mean, I was only curious about filter 102 and 354 (looked the list again now). Not sure if I'll use any of them though. - Klein Muçi (talk) 23:15, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

C)

@Klein Muçi: 102 and 354 are mostly just very long lists of troublesome English phrases or words, 354 get a lot of FP's so it only "tags" edits as well. — xaosflux Talk 23:24, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
Oh, I see. Can you write me somewhere the overall syntax of 102? Of course, without the list of words. Maybe I use that in the future if we start having problems. For the moment being, we've had only 1 or 2 accounts we've had to block because of the names. And what does the filter do to these accounts by the way? It blocks them indefinitely after being created I guess? - Klein Muçi (talk) 23:33, 28 April 2020 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi: I've imported it (disabled) as w:sq:Speciale:AbuseFilter/13. What it does is: if someone has a global account, but has never edited on a specific project - normally they get an account auto-created upon their first edit; this filter prevents that account from creating. — xaosflux Talk 00:48, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
Thank you a lot man! I'm seriously surprised by your energy and patience to deal with my (and others') requests all the time this fast and with this kind of dedication. Do users here get a special kind of system message for that? I'm not sure what to write at ours (since we use specific messages for each filter) because I don't really understand what exactly means to "prevent an account from being created" for the user having that account and wanting to edit with it. Is the user able to edit? - Klein Muçi (talk) 01:00, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi: oops, confused that one with something else. That filter isn't about account creation, but it blocks any edits from someone that is both "new" and has a username matching those patterns. We only give them our generic deny message, MediaWiki:Abusefilter-disallowed here. — xaosflux Talk 01:53, 29 April 2020 (UT
So basically they are blocked indefinitely. Can you take a quick look even to filter 30 as a final request? What do you think are some lines I need to remove/localize for SqWiki? We just want a basic filter that starts working when the anti-blanking filter stops. We were fine with just that filter until we started seeing some vandalism behavior of removing big chunks of texts from articles without blanking the entire page so those cases failed to be filtered by that. - Klein Muçi (talk) 02:07, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
Well they are not "blocked", they are just prevented from editing until the account age passes that other threshold. — xaosflux Talk 02:15, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
30 on sqwiki or here? — xaosflux Talk 02:15, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Ooh, I had missed that age detail. Thank you for clarifying! 30 on here. - Klein Muçi (talk) 03:58, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Only lines 7 & 8 may need looking at, as these are text matches against English words. You can try without these lines completely if you want to see what you will match. Keep in mind, we do not stop edits with this filter - only warn/tag. You can enable it, and set it to do nothign except for log, monitor it for a couple of weeks. — xaosflux Talk 16:46, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
What do those lines serve for? Just a general idea. And can you explain a bit more thoroughly how does line 6 help? I read the description at the filters notes but I want to be sure. - Klein Muçi (talk) 23:05, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
They are basically like this:
6: don't trigger this if the person making the edit has also recently edited the page already
7: don't trigger this if someone is making this page in to a redirect
8: don't trigger this if the summary says that it is a reversion/undo/etc
— xaosflux Talk 03:46, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
How do I put "#Ridrejto" as another word for "#Redirect"? Together with it I mean. I just add a pipe between them? - Klein Muçi (talk) 09:18, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
With that formatting, and for a single word, you can just add another condition:
  • !("#ridrejto" in lcase(added_lines)) &
To support an array of words you'd have to do something like line 8. — xaosflux Talk 10:28, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
Any chance you could help me have it like line 8? :P Just as a beatifying aspect. If you think it's better in different lines, I'll take your word for it. - Klein Muçi (talk) 14:23, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
AF's, especially "tag" type need to be very carefully tweaked on most projects, and any condition not needed shouldn't be used for performance reasons. A good first start would be to set it up for logging on the project you want, then do nothing for a couple of weeks, review the logs at least daily to make sure you are not getting "too many" hits - then adjust for only things that are actually happening. — xaosflux Talk 14:26, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Okay then. As always, thank you! :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 14:38, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Hey there, Xaos! :) Is it possible to exclude one particular user from a filter? - Klein Muçi (talk) 23:46, 4 May 2020 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi: usually, but it is almost always a very poor design and a group is better. Something like this can usually be used:
& ! (contains_any(user_name, "User1", "User2"))
— xaosflux Talk 02:54, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
I added 1 bracket you had missed. Thank you! I just wanted to give special access to 1 bot so he could deal with the double redirects. I believe everything is fine now. :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 14:29, 5 May 2020 (UTC)
In general, you should exempt "bots" by group from most filters, assuming you don't just had out bot flags left and right they are already expected to only be making constructive edits. — xaosflux Talk 14:38, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Oh, can't believe I had totally forgotten of that! Bots exist as 1 user group! Thank you very much! I'll do that right now! :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 15:15, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2020

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

Administrator changes

removed Gnangarra • Kaisershatner • Malcolmxl5

CheckUser changes

readded Callanecc

Oversight changes

readded HJ Mitchell

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:20, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-20

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

Recent changes

  • Everyone can now import photos from Flickr to Commons with the UploadWizard. Before this only autopatrollers on Commons could import photos from Flickr. [57]

Problems

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

  • Advanced item JavaScript scripts and gadgets can no longer check multiple keys at once via mw.config.exists() or mw.user.tokens.exists(). You can use exists() or get() to check one at a time instead. [61]

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

20:41, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

sir, pls approved my account

sir, pls approved my account Pkschhonkar (talk) 18:43, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Not sure what you are asking for, your account already is made. To learn more about contributing to the project, please see Help:Introduction. — xaosflux Talk 18:45, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
This will be referring to their request at WP:PERM/EVC (and my talk page). I've asked for a reason which appears to not be forthcoming but instead some admin shopping is taking place. stwalkerster (talk) 18:50, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Please check your mail

Hello, Xaosflux. 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.

--Chinmayisk (talk) 09:53, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Replied. — xaosflux Talk 11:28, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Help Me Please :-S

I moved the template over to a talk page as it said, but I am really lost as to what steps need to be done to start getting the mailing list created and the content for it. The shell was moved to Talk:Mass_message_senders/Shell-0066 which may not even be right. Can you help or point to a step-by-step guide for me, please? Thank you Galendalia CVU Member \ Chat Me Up 22:22, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

@Galendalia: I moved that shell again to a more appropriate name, Wikipedia:WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia/Participants/MailingList. You will need to fill it with the talk pages of the people you want the messages to go to. Wikipedia:Mass_message_senders#Requesting_a_mailing has some directions. If you are lost and want to ask for help you can post at WT:MMS. — xaosflux Talk 23:09, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: Thanks! That helps a lot, especially with the links. I will get those done in the next day or so. Thank you again for the information. Galendalia CVU Member \ Chat Me Up 23:23, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-21

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

Recent changes

  • If you forget your password you can ask for a new one to be sent to your email address. You need to know your email address or your username. You can choose that you need to enter both your email address and your username. This is a preference. This is to get fewer password reset emails someone else asked for. This is now available on all Wikimedia wikis. [62][63]

Problems

Changes later this week

Future changes

  • Graphs will be rendered in the reader's browser. This will use Javascript. Graphs will hopefully work better for everyone who uses Javascript. It will not work for users who don't use Javascript. This will not affect diagrams in image files. [68]
  • Advanced item Some CSS for the skins has been simplified. This affects div#p-personal, div#p-navigation, div#p-interaction, div#p-tb, div#p-lang, div#p-namespaces, div#p-variants and div#footer. They will have to remove div. You will have to update your gadgets, scripts or user styles. This is so we can use HTML5. [69]
  • Advanced item Some CSS for the Vector skin has been changed. This affects #p-variants, #p-namespaces, #p-personal, #p-views and #p-cactions. They can no longer use > ul. You might need to update your gadgets, scripts or user styles. See how.

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

17:19, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-22

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

Changes later this week

  • The visual editor will now work in the Modern skin. The changes that needed to happen for this to work could cause problems for some scripts or gadgets. [70]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from May 26. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from May 27. It will be on all wikis from May 28 (calendar).

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

14:18, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

Requesting Revision Deletion

Hi,

I'm requesting that you rev-delete a diff, which in particular uses a racial slur: https://wiki.riteme.site/w/index.php?title=User_talk:BasedMoment&diff=959796343&oldid=959733649. (For some reason IRC isn't working for me because it says I am banned despite rarely using it). Hummerrocket (talk) 17:44, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

@Hummerrocket:  Done — xaosflux Talk 21:08, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 May 2020

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:06, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2020

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

Administrator changes

added CaptainEek • Creffett • Cwmhiraeth
removed Anna Frodesiak • Buckshot06 • Ronhjones • SQL

CheckUser changes

removed SQL

Guideline and policy news

Arbitration

  • A motion was passed to enact a 500/30 restriction on articles related to the history of Jews and antisemitism in Poland during World War II (1933–45), including the Holocaust in Poland. Article talk pages where disruption occurs may also be managed with the stated restriction.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:28, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Template:Inactive admin

FWIW, I don't believe this template is transcluded on the bot config page or moved there by any automated process. We've always had to update the bot page manually as a separate step in the past. Based on this, I am not certain whether indefinite page protection is warranted. UninvitedCompany 21:17, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

@UninvitedCompany: it didn't used to be, but that bot had to be replaced and now it looks like it is called directly from the bot config (User:JJMC89 bot/config/InactiveAdmins). Gave it SPP to prevent causal disruption, as the bot wouldn't be checking to see if it was vandalized. — xaosflux Talk 01:04, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-23

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

Recent changes

  • There is a new beta version of the Wikimedia Commons app for Android. It has a new zoom function when you look at images. It can also suggest places when you upload geotagged photos. [71]

Problems

  • There was a problem with the Commons database on 27 May. Commons could not be edited for eight minutes. Because of this problem the database was moved. This caused another short read-only time on 29 May. [72][73][74]
  • The Vector skin had a problem where you couldn't add links to the article in other languages. You couldn't see the section if there were no links to other languages already. It also removed content translation links and links to language settings. This has now been fixed. [75]

Changes later this week

  • You can get a notification when someone links to a page you created. You can turn these notifications off for individual pages. You can soon turn them off also in the notifications you get. [76]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 June. It will be on all wikis from 4 June (calendar).

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

22:32, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

CentNotice/Geonotice...?

Howdy hello! I know you are very familiar with watchlist notices, but was wondering if you were experienced with centralnotices/geonotices/whatever they call the banner things that appear at the top of pages. I was looking to propose one on WP:VPR for the Wikipedia:WikiProject Black Lives Matter/June 2020 BLM article improvement drive, but I wanted to have my terminology and technical aspects correct first. Any advice appreciated! CaptainEek Edits Ho Cap'n!⚓ 21:29, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

@CaptainEek: there are many places a top of page banner could be placed, most are never used. Which one depends mostly on where you want it to appear, and who you want to be able to see it. {{MW notices}} describes these a bit. We also have {{Main Page banner}}. Please review the discussion at MediaWiki_talk:Watchlist-messages#BLM_drive_mockups before starting a new one as well. — xaosflux Talk 11:23, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

Unreferenced new article - Filter

Hello, Xaosflux!

I was thinking of adding a new filter at SqWiki that stops new users from creating new articles without references. We have a serious problem with new articles that are written (not translated with CTT) without any references. So I thought of a filter that searches for the <ref> tags and if they're not present, it doesn't allow you to save your changes. This could raise the overall standard of articles being created but it also may drastically low the overall number of new articles depending on how informed are new users on the technical side of adding references. So basically I'd thought I'd experiment a little with it first. Having it log only for a while and maybe just making it a warning filter rather than a stopping one after that period. Do you have any experience with cases like these? It's the approach I described above the best one for the said job? Can you help me a bit to create the syntax?

Best regards! :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 09:33, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

@Klein Muçi: we would never make a stopping filter based on that type of syntax here, do you have a policy on sqwiki that the only way an article can be referenced is with <ref> tags? You would also need to exempt redirects. We deal with new article review via our WP:NPP (new page patrol) process. — xaosflux Talk 11:04, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, the NPP is exactly the problem. :P We are always lacking human resources and the general idea was to "weed out" articles not up to the standard of inclusion in Wikipedia. Usually notability or articles lacking a wikified form, self promotion, copyright infringement, or other forms of spam. So we could actually be able to patrol the remaining ones. I'm aware this is not a failproof method because as I said, not many new users would know about the <ref> tags but I thought I would keep it on log only for a while to see if it would be helpful on that problem or counterproductive. As for the policy, we have a de facto policy about that. What I mean is that we don't have a policy specifying how referencing should or should not be done but the guideline on it only gives this as an option and that also is the standard all the community teaches online and IRL on newcomers to use. Then again, I should make myself clear that ref tags are not the real intent here. Nor are the references on articles themselves. The aim is to somehow filter out the kind of articles I mentioned above and we thought the inclusion of references would be a good criterion on which we can judge on that. But given the many hypothetical drawbacks that we both mentioned, I thought seeing it on log only would be a good idea. - Klein Muçi (talk) 11:38, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
It should be fairly easy to write a filter that only looks at ns:0, for a new page, where the first edit doesn't contain the ref text - but I think this is a bad idea. I'm not sure about sqwiki, but many editors save their new articles many times as they build them up. If I create a new article, hit save, then add the references, hit save - that is fine here:but you are talking about refusing that initial contribution, which could discourage new editors. You should have a well attended community discussion to make sure that is what you really want first. — xaosflux Talk 14:23, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
Our filters 833 and 686 are public, and include some ways to go about this (though we would never set these to disallow). — xaosflux Talk 14:26, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
Yes, that's exactly my main worry too. References are usually the last thing that are added, after the whole article has been created. And that takes rarely only 1 save. I did talk with some people from our community because I had these second thoughts and they too were worried about the same things, the discouragement of new users, even though they said that the general intention was good. It's hard to gather a well attained meeting with our community and that's why I asked here to get a more technical comment. With your comment now, I'm further discouraged to go on with that idea. I'll take a look at the filters you mentioned anyway and most likely won't go past the log only phase. If I even go at that phase. - Klein Muçi (talk) 16:29, 8 June 2020 (UTC)
If you have new page patrol resources, setting these to 'tag' or 'log' isn't necessarily a bad thing, it is transparent to the new editors. — xaosflux Talk 17:31, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-24

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

Recent changes

  • Some articles have tables that can be sorted in different ways. For example a list of countries can be sorted alphabetically but you can click on the size column to sort them by size. If you clicked on the column a second time it would sort the countries from the bottom to the top instead. A third click will now take you back to the original sorting. [77]
  • Self-closed tags now work as in the HTML5 specifications. This means you should stop using some of them. <b/> is an example of a self-closed tag that won't work. area, base, br, col, embed, hr, img, input, keygen, link, meta, param, source, track, wbr can be self-closed. Pages with tags that should not be self-closed have been listed in a tracking category since 2016. They will be listed in Special:LintErrors/self-closed-tag. This doesn't affect <references /> or <ref />. [78]
  • There is a banner called WikidataPageBanner. It is for example used by the Wikivoyages, Wikimedia Russia and the Catalan, Basque, Galician and Turkish Wikipedias. It will now been seen by mobile visitors too. Before this it was only seen on desktop. The wikis should update instructions on MediaWiki:Sitenotice so that editors know to test and style for mobile too. [79][80]

Changes later this week

  • Advanced item You can now edit MassMessage descriptions through the API. This is useful for tools and gadgets. [81]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 June. It will be on all wikis from 11 June (calendar).

Future changes

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

21:12, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

2fa help

Hi, this is Spartaz and I have accidentally logged out while my mobile has died, so I cannot access my authenticator. I have the scratch codes but its nor clear how I use them. Do I just use them instead of the authenticator code? I have email enabled if you want to verify my identity hidden ip]]) 22:31, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

scratch that, turned out i was using an old set of codes. I'm back in now. Sorry to bother you. Spartaz Humbug! 22:44, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Seamfix

Greetings, I tried to create Seamfix but I realized it had been created by someone else and later deleted by an admin for advertising or promotion. I wasn't the original creator but I have better information, text and reliable sources to re-create it. Can you help me get it back? Advise me please, thank you MarkCarey911 (talk) 01:18, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

@MarkCarey911: hello, yes that article has been deleted twice - each time for not meeting the community standards, and instead being a fairly obvious advertisement. At this point, if you think this is actually a noteworthy subject I suggest you use the Wikipedia:Article_wizard that can help you get started with drafting the article. Best wishes, — xaosflux Talk 01:38, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
@Xaosflux: thank you so much, I'll do as you suggested. MarkCarey911 (talk) 16:10, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

Adding date field to the query

Please visit this page. In that, I would like to know how I can add the date of creation of the template (if possible, in normal date format ie. after converting into date format). Adithyak1997 (talk) 05:27, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

@Adithyak1997: please follow up at Wikipedia:Request a query. — xaosflux Talk 11:15, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Hello

Hello Xaosflux, how are you? I would like to clarify a doubt and I believe that nothing better than asking a bureaucrat from en.wikipédia. There at pt.wikipedia, my home wiki, rollbacks group users can block vandals for up to a maximum of 1 day, with the purpose of helping to combat vandalism. I would like to know if it has already been discussed about it here on en.wikipédia. Thanks in advance. --Editor D.S (talk) 18:19, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

@Editor D.S: to your question directly, giving more people "block" access has come up many times, see Wikipedia:Perennial_proposals#Hierarchical_structures. As to the actual implementation at ptwiki (c.f. phab:T37261) there appear to be no technical controls limiting blocks to "1 day" - or even preventing them going on a blocking spree and disrupting your sysops and crats, or making massively disruptive ip range blocks - so this is just a local policy/rule. We are fairly liberal in handing out rollback access, with 6,865 rollbackers here, compared to the 171 on ptwiki - so I don't expect this would ever happen here, as it would raise the requirements for our rollbackers and require a review of the thousands of existing ones. If such a proposal were to go forward it would likely be with some new unique group that was granted selected permissions - but as the recaps in the first link show, this has been frequently resited. Hope that helps explain things? — xaosflux Talk 19:05, 12 June 2020 (UTC)
@Xaosflux:, I understand perfectly. It would really be more complicated to implement this permission on en.wikipedia, due to the number of rollbackers. Not to mention that the requirements to join such a group would be bigger, as it happens in pt.wikipedia. Thank you very much for the clarification. A great weekend for you! :) --Editor D.S (talk) 19:25, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-25

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

Recent changes

  • Advanced item Toolforge hosts several tools created by the Wikimedia community like edit counters or enhanced editors. It is changing the domain from tools.wmflabs.org to toolforge.org. The routing scheme is moving from tools.wmflabs.org/toolname to toolname.toolforge.org. You can read the details. Tools that use OAuth will have to be updated to keep working. You can ask for help.

Problems

  • There is a Wikidata item link in the sidebar on many pages. This disappeared for a couple of days for users who have the Monobook skin. This was because of a bug. It has now been fixed. [83]
  • Editing, logging in and logging out didn't work properly for a short period of time last week. It was soon fixed. [84]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

  • Advanced item Pywikibot is a Python library to automate work on wikis. It will not support Python 2 after the new version in July. Support for Python 3.4 and MediaWiki below 1.19 will also be dropped. You should migrate to Python 3. You can ask for help. [85]
  • The selectors .menu and .vectorMenu will no longer work in the Vector skin. This can affect gadgets and user scripts. .menu should be replaced by ul. .vectorMenu should be replaced by .vector-menu. [86]

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

21:38, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

MediaWiki Gadget-formWizard edit request

If you have time, would you be able to assist with the request here: MediaWiki_talk:Gadget-formWizard/WikiProject_Organized_Labour/Join, please? (I'm approaching you as it's been a week since the request and other fully-protected requests have been answered in that time, not sure why this one has lagged...). Many thanks, --Goldsztajn (talk) 19:58, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

 Done — xaosflux Talk 22:07, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

Work for Review

https://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Draft:Patricia_(Financial_Technology_Company) Please, I created this and I need your help with the reviews. Thank you so much for you have taught me on wikipedia. MarkCarey911 (talk) 23:56, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Looks like another reviewer already came by. — xaosflux Talk 01:51, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-26

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

Problems

  • There are some new tools to make it easier for newcomers to start editing. They are available on some wikis. These wikis had a problem with the visual editor for a short period of time last week. This was because of a bug in the new tools. It was soon fixed. [87]
  • Advanced item Some user scripts and gadgets stopped working because of a change to CSS selectors. .vectorTabs should be replaced with .vector-menu-tabs to fix this. [88]

Changes later this week

  • The developers are working on a new interface to solve edit conflicts on talk pages. This will be released on 24 June. You can give feedback. [89]
  • Recurrent item The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 23 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 24 June. It will be on all wikis from 25 June (calendar).

Future changes

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

18:49, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Test-wiki translation adminship

Hi. Can you please revoke my translation admin rights on testwiki? Convenience link: testwiki:Special:UserRights/DannyS712. Thanks, --DannyS712 (talk) 04:33, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

 Done — xaosflux Talk 04:38, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

Ronhjones

I just saw that Ronhjones and his bot were up for inactivity removal last month & that you removed the sysop flags from both. The day after you removed the flag, it was discovered by the community that on the day of his last edit he and his wife died in a house fire. I just learned of this myself within the past hour. I thought that you might want to know...unfortunately, he won't be making use of the 'Restoration of adminship" procedure. I had hoped his absence meant that he had just retired from editing...honestly really strikes home at the sad and uncomfortable reality that at least some of the users who inexplicably become inactive may very well have died and we simply may never know. --TheSandDoctor Talk 06:38, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

(TPS) @TheSandDoctor: Yes, Xaosflux helped deal with things relating to the bot account. It's very sad indeed. Graham87 07:58, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
@Graham87: Gah...I should've looked at the full archive. I just looked at the permissions log permalink. Thanks for linking. --TheSandDoctor Talk 08:28, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 June 2020

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:54, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-27

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

Problems

  • Everyone was logged out. This was because a few users saw the wikis as if they were logged in to someone else's account. The problem should be fixed now. [91]
  • Some readers didn't see new edits to pages. If the page had been recently changed they saw an older version of the page instead. This only affected readers who were logged out. It lasted for ten days. It has been fixed. [92]

Changes later this week

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

Future changes

  • The Modern and Monobook skins use the ID searchGoButton for the go button. This is searchButton for Vector. To have the same ID for all skins it will change to searchButton in Monobook and Modern too. This will affect gadgets and user scripts. It will happen on 23 July. They should be updated to use searchButton. You can read more and see a list of affected scripts.

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

16:31, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – July 2020

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

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:26, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

Feedback request: Wikipedia policies and guidelines request for comment

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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. [93]

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. [94]
  • 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)

re: event coordination

Thanks, I will keep this in mind. This was a bit unusual as it was done due to sudden trolling/harassment which required some elevated permissions to prevent other new editors in the area from being affected. The course has ended, however, so they don't need those permissions one way or another anymore. Cheers, --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 01:33, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Templates missing documentation - SqWiki

Hello, Xaosflux! :) Long time without writing. I need help with a technical task.

We have LOTS of undocumented templates and modules in SqWiki. I want to make the documentation infrastructure a bit stronger so I started by creating a category for templates missing documentation. And for the moment being, I'm browsing templates one by one manually and if I see they are missing a documentation subpage, I add them in that category. Now I thought that maybe it would be better to do this job with a template on its own but I'm having technical difficulties creating one that serves that purpose. The idea is to create a template that can be used on other templates (without messing with the pages on which these templates are used) which notifies users that the said template is missing a doc page and in the same time it auto-categorizes that template in the category I mentioned above while also giving the user the capability to add a doc subpage to it. Does it make sense to you what I wrote? Can this be done? Do you have any other better ideas of how to handle the overall missing-doc-subpages situation? - Klein Muçi (talk) 15:26, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

So not all "templates" probably even should have a dedicated documentation page - especially ones that are pure content (e.g. a chart that is used on a few articles). What we do here is have one template {{documentation}} that we put on any template that we want to use the "/doc" style documentation, this uses our Module:Documentation to manage the doc pages. This will add the links to the pages that should be created, but it doesn't have anything to do with categories when no page exists, we are set up to categorize actually created /doc pages though. So a lot of this is really about what you want to do - do you really want to require all your editors to always use a /doc page? — xaosflux Talk 15:42, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
Yes, I understand what you mean. My idea was to create a place where we could gather different templates in need of attention (the category) and hopefully other users would come and see that batch of templates and help by writing the doc subpages in some of them. Alternatively, I could just use the {{documentation}} on all of them and hope for the best, like in the above case but the problem with that method is that I wouldn't have the template cluster which I mentioned above. I'm not really eager to leave that detail because of the way we usually handle cases like this. Like in EnWiki, we put them in the community portal and that's the place where people can go and find work. Now if that module could somehow categorize pages missing a doc page, maybe after adding the {{documentation}} template, that would be a better solution but I don't think that's possible, is it? - Klein Muçi (talk) 16:34, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi: having the page 'exist' likely isn't going to mean "this template has been sufficiently documented" - so you may be better off tagging pages that you need documented and making someone clear that when it is ready. Be careful with your noincludes :D — xaosflux Talk 19:12, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
Yes, that's what I was thinking. I was even able to make the needed template for it by experimenting a bit. Thank you for finding time to deal with my requests! :) - Klein Muçi (talk) 00:34, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
So, I did make the template as I said and it works fine overall but I have one final problem with it. Since it is a template that's used on other templates, it gets transcluded everywhere those templates are transcluded to. I can add <noinclude> tags on it and the problem is solved but I don't want to do that all the time so I thought of making those tags part of the template itself but how do I escape the first level of software reading so they only start to have effect after they're transcluded? I'm afraid my explanation isn't clear enough so I'll try to give an example below.
Template A is a template without a doc subpage used on 1k articles. I created template B which, when put on template A, notifies users that template A is missing a doc page and has a ready-made link in which they can click and create the missing doc subpage for it. It also categorizes template A in a category for templates missing documentation. The problem is that now template B gets transcluded not only on template A but also on 1k articles on which template A is also transcluded. It also categorizes the 1k articles on the category for templates missing documentation. We surely don't want that to happen. I can use <noinclude> tags on template B when using it on template A and the problem would be solved but that would require me to write <noinclude>{{B}}</noinclude> over and over again for every template which it is used on. I want the <noinclude> tags to be part of template B themselves so I don't have to write them over and over again. (So I can only write {{B}} and that would be enough.) But if I just write them on template B, they take effect immediately and the whole template B stops being transcluded on template A. I want them to take effect only after being transcluded on template A so that template B doesn't get transcluded on 1k articles template A is transcluded on. How do I do that? How do I escape "the first level"? In short, how do I transclude <noinclude> tags?
I thought using <includeonly> <noinclude> </includeonly> .... <includeonly> </noinclude> </includeonly> would work but apparently it doesn't. Any other way? - Klein Muçi (talk) 02:14, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
Are you trying to make a visible notice where the content template is used that it needs work, or only if someone looks at the template itself? — xaosflux Talk 11:34, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
Only if someone looks at the template page itself. I have everything ready here. The template makes the visible notice, adds a link to add a /doc page and auto-categorizes the template on which it is put on. I just want it not to be transcluded on together with the templates in which it is used on. In other words, I just want to know how to transclude <noinclude> tags. The technical way of escaping them. Because what I used didn't work and it broke the syntax. - Klein Muçi (talk) 11:47, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
Is that the template you want to put on other templates? — xaosflux Talk 12:27, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
Yes. I mean, I may do some other changes graphically to make it more aesthetic but the technical side is done. But if I use that template as it is in other templates, it gets transcluded together with them wherever they are transcluded. I don't want that to happen. So the <noinclude> tags problem I mentioned above. - Klein Muçi (talk) 12:41, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
Ok so on your main/content templates, in general all of your documentation should be wrapped in noincludes:
Native / legacy style

<noinclude> Here is my documenation on this template.... </noinclude>

direct /doc style

<noinclude> {{/doc}} </nowinclude>

using a module/master wrapper style style

<noinclude> {{documentation}} </nowinclude>

— xaosflux Talk 17:32, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
I'm really sorry but I believe you haven't understood what I meant, mostly because of me lacking technical terminology to express myself correctly. :/ - Klein Muçi (talk) 18:11, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
Hmm, in general you probably shouldn't be asking your readers to write template documentation - so that shouldn't be visible when looking at a page that merely transcludes the template. — xaosflux Talk 19:36, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
Yes. You're right on this one. That's exactly what I don't want to do. How do I do that without needing to write "noinclude" tags every time I'm using that template? I want to incorporate them to be part of the template themselves so they get transcluded automatically without needing to write them over and over again. That's what I'm asking. To understand what I mean, please, take a look here. (Just an example I stumbled upon. Don't pay attention to the extension on itself.)

...BoilerRoom is different in its approach from similar extensions in that it was designed to allow the creation of boilerplate text without any need for text escaping. It deliberately does not respect <includeonly>, <onlyinclude>, and <noinclude> tags, instead providing its own mechanism through the special behavior of the provided <boilerplate> tag. This behavior simplifies certain situations, such as creating boilerplates for templates, where unusual escape mechanisms like <include<includeonly>only> would be necessary to achieve the same effect. Other <boilerplate> tags can be even placed inside without any need for an escape mechanism.

 That unusual escape mechanism is what I'm talking about. How do I do that with "noinclude" tags? - Klein Muçi (talk) 01:06, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
@Klein Muçi: basically, you don't. Your templates are all going to need to end with a noinclude section for your documenation or other things like their categories. Even ours are when we use module powered documentation (see example here). Could you do something else with extensions, even with gadgets or javascripts - yes, but on WMF projects it is likely a bad idea as editors from every project that doesn't use something very custom would either break things on your project, or would face an unexpected barrier to being able to help with things. — xaosflux Talk 02:26, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
And don't even get me started on how visualeditor would deal with oddities! — xaosflux Talk 02:29, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
Okay then. Roger that. :P - Klein Muçi (talk) 13:14, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Happy bureaucratship anniversary!

Wishing Xaosflux a very happy bureaucratship anniversary on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! History DMZ (talk)+(ping) 01:29, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
Thanks! — xaosflux Talk 02:27, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
Wishing Xaosflux a very happy bureaucratship anniversary on behalf of the Birthday Committee! CommanderWaterford (talk) 07:02, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
Thanks! — xaosflux Talk 11:16, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
Wishing Xaosflux a very happy bureaucratship anniversary on behalf of the Birthday Committee! CAPTAIN RAJU(T) 19:09, 9 July 2020 (UTC)
Thanks! — xaosflux Talk 19:14, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

You've got mail!

Hello, Xaosflux. Please check your email; you've got mail!
Message added 14:03, 9 July 2020 (UTC). 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.

Interstellarity (talk) 14:03, 9 July 2020 (UTC)


Angola

Why did you take away my right to make contributions and edits on the Angola page?

El C changed my user rights so I can add information to the Angola page. However, now I can’t do it because you changed my user rights. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DiogoC300 (talk • contribs) 19:17, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

@DiogoC300: Hello, I removed the "confirmed" flag from your account as you now have the superior "autoconfirmed" flag. I don't know what the "Angola website" is. If you are referring to our encyclopedia article Angola the protection level on that page is already set to "Require autoconfirmed or confirmed access". Try to log out and back in again to see if it resolves your issue? If that does not work, please let me know the exact error message you are seeing for follow up. — xaosflux Talk 19:23, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Now it works, thanks for your help. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DiogoC300 (talk • contribs) 14:24, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Good news! Happy editing, — xaosflux Talk 15:03, 10 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. [95]

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. [96][97]

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. [98]
  • 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

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)

Clarification please...

If I am reading the logs correctly you agreed to rename a departed user's ID to Renamed user U1krw4txwPvuEp3lqV382vOcqa7. If I am reading the logs correctly you agreed to delete both this contributor's User page and User talk page.

Two wrongs don't make a right. I don't think any contributor should experience off-wiki harassment, even if they lapsed from civility and collegiality, here on the wikipedia.

I don't think anyone who felt any contributor had been a serial bully, or otherwise lapsed from our policies should feel justified to bully them, when the tables are turned. I am not trying to gravedance here.

But I would like to know whether this retirement was voluntary, with them leaving in good status.

It is unclear to me whether the block log would show the original user-id's block log, following a courtesy rename. Was this contributor ever blocked? Are they under an indefinite block now?

They stopped using their original wiki-ID for about a year, about eight years ago. It turned out they couldn't stay away.

A lot of people find it hard to stay away. My understanding of our renaming policy is that it is a courtesy intended for good faith contributors who are genuinely leaving the project. It is my understanding that if those who requested a rename can't stay away, return to the wikipedia, are not generally protected from being asked to answer for their edits made using their original ID.

If I have that right do you think there are special circumstances here, that would protect this individual from being asked questions about edits they made prior to their renaming, if someone were to recognize them after a return to the wikipedia under a new ID? Geo Swan (talk) 21:55, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Hello @Geo Swan:, so there are a few thing going on here - will try to answer all your points
  • Yes, I did rename that account on request of the account holder, I won't link to the logs but they exist publicly and do contain the prior username.
    • This is a fairly routine action for someone that wants to leave the project and stop contributing under any account (c.f. WP:VANISH)
    • Logs associated with that account still are, under the "renamed user..." account name.
    • Renames are a global action, and governed beyond the English Wikipedia policies
      • Notably, that account has no prior or current blocks
      • To the best of my knowledge this editor was in good standing here
  • Yes, I deleted their userpage; this is a fairly routine action that anyone may request as WP:CSD#U1
  • Yes, I deleted their user talk page; this is not a routine action - the Oversight team was involved in this so I can't really discuss it - appealing this action of mine should either go privately to the OS team or privately to ArbCom. Unfortunately, I didn't use a good log summary on that page deletion (it was part of a batch of other U1's) to explain this, but we can't edit log summaries to fix that.
  • About vanished users that return - our Clean start policy covers much of your question.
  • The Harassment policy is quite long, but as you mentioned harassment I wanted to refer you to it; it is best to avoid anything that may be consider harassing.
  • Getting down to what you may have been looking for the most here seems to be the ask if you can/should ask an editor "did you previously edit as user:zzzzzzzzzzz" - I suggest not doing so because it is unlikely to improve the encyclopedia. If you think this person has returned under another account and is behaving in a way that is fishy - emailing the functionary team would be a good start. If they do something like run an RfA, etc - asking them "have you edited under any other accounts" generically is generally OK.
I hope I addressed your concerns here - if not please let me know. — xaosflux Talk 22:35, 13 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. [103]
  • Some users keep getting the notifications for the same event. Some of these are old events. [104]
  • 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. [105]

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. [106]

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)

Edit deletion

Hey. I made an edit in my sandbox as part of the BFRA (Special:Permalink/96894866) which appears to be deleted. Just wondering so I don't make the same mistake again, did I err in the bot policy with that edit? I assumed sandbox/self userspace edits were permissible. Possibly an attribution error too, I suppose, since I forgot to have it add an edit summary in that edit. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:35, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

@ProcrastinatingReader: that perma link seems wrong, I can look for the edit for you - what is the page title of the page it was made on? — xaosflux Talk 14:38, 22 July 2020 (UTC)
Hmm, that permalink is indeed wrong apparently, it was actually Special:Permalink/968948661 (at User:ProcrastinatingReader/sandbox3) which is intact. I don't know what I did to get from 61 -> 66 at the end. Thanks, and sorry for the confusion. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 14:42, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Move from WT:BN

Thanks for the move. Apologies for the error, I had both pages open at same time and didn't check which one I was posting in. :) -- Euryalus (talk) 14:23, 26 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. [107]
  • 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. [108][109]
  • Translation Notification Bot was sending the same message multiple times to every translator. This has been fixed. [110]
  • Some users were receiving the same notification multiple times. This has been fixed. [111]

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)

166.182.80.8

Could we please have user:166.182.80.8 blocked ASAP. She probably will vandalize until she is blocked. CLCStudent (talk) 13:12, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

@CLCStudent:  Done - next time reporting to WP:AIV will probably be better though. — xaosflux Talk 13:14, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
I did that, but it was taking long, and this troll was likely to be persistent. CLCStudent (talk) 13:15, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – August 2020

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

Administrator changes

added Red Phoenix
readded Euryalus • SQL
removed Jujutacular • Monty845 • Rettetast • Madchester

Oversight changes

readded GB fan
removed Keegan • Opabinia regalis • Premeditated Chaos

Guideline and policy news

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:21, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Template:Video views

Hi, @Xaosflux:, hope you are fine. I'm here to seek your assistance in creating a template. I want to create a template titled "Template:Video views". And I want its documentation as follows:

{{Video views|No. of views|Website|Date}}.

Example:

{{Video views|100 million|YouTube|01 August 2020}}

It should be shown as: The video has received 100 million views on YouTube as of 01 August 2020.

I'm practicing this in my sandbox. Can you help me? Thank you. Empire AS Talk! 10:31, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

@Empire AS: you should start by looking over: Help:Template#Usage_syntax. Note, while positional template parameters are supported, your template would likely benefit from using named parameters if it is something other will also use (especially in articles). Side note, you should update your signature to remove the space between "User talk:" and "Empire AS". — xaosflux Talk 11:59, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
@Xaosflux:, I really don't understand the complexities in making a template, especially parameters. Therefore, I want your help. About signature, do you suggest me this signature.Empire ASTalk!. Thank you. Empire AS Talk! 12:22, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
@Empire AS: in this part of your signature: [[User talk: Empire AS|<span st <- remove the space in the first highlighted area, and change the 2 spaces in the second area to one.
Regarding templates, they are comprised of two parts, one page that houses the actual template, this includes the static parts, markup, and the places you will insert parameters. I've made one of these for you at: User:Empire AS/sandbox 3. Then you have to actually call the template from somewhere else, I've made an example page for you here: User:Empire AS/sandbox 4. These can get a lot more complicated, and you will want to read all the documentation if you want to do something fancy. — xaosflux Talk 14:04, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
@Xaosflux:, Thank you. I've corrected my signature. I also want that if all parameters are not filled, then it wouldn't display and should be empty. If only first parameter is filled (like views=100M) then The video has received 100M views, Just this text be shown up. I can't read time taking templates documentations. I've no problem if you are busy on other projects. Thank you. Tears. Empire AS Talk! 16:11, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
You would need to use IF's - but part of template design will be determining which parameters should be required and which should be optional. For something like this that seems like it would be for use in articles, you will want to go by the manual of style for what should be included, especially related to where you intend the references to go. — xaosflux Talk 16:55, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
@Xaosflux:, I've nearly completed the template but the only problem left is that it requires the names of parameters before the values. I want to remove that in this way that without typing parameter names, it should work the same. See it here on my sandbox. Can you fix it? Tears. Empire AS Talk! 15:29, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
@Empire AS: check now, is that what you were going for? — xaosflux Talk 16:57, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
@Xaosflux:, yes 'Named' and 'Unnamed' parameters both are good but 'mixed' parameter is not required. Thank you for completing the template and pdelete the sandbox 3 and 4 you created. I already have 3 sandboxes. Tears. Empire AS Talk! 02:46, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

The Signpost: 2 August 2020

* Read this Signpost in full * Single-page * Unsubscribe * MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:26, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

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. [112]
  • 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. [113]
  • There is a problem with the global preferences for the "Use Legacy Vector" option. Developers are working on fixing it. [114]
  • 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. [115]

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. [116]
  • 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. [117]
  • Advanced item 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.
  • Advanced item Bot operators can use Pywikibot to regularly archive discussions. The behavior when the bot uses counter to prevent large archives was changed. [118]
  • Recurrent item 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)

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. [119]

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. [120]

Changes later this week

  • Recurrent item 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. [121][122]

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16:06, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

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