User talk:Alsee

Growth team updates #1

Welcome to the first newsletter for the new Growth team!  

The Growth Team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects. We will be starting with Wikipedias, but we hope these changes will benefit every community.

8 ideas we consider: tell us what you think about them!

We are considering new features to build, that could retain new editors in mid-size Wikipedias. We will be testing new ideas in Czech and Korean Wikipedias, and then we'll talk to more communities (yours!) about adopting the ideas that work well.

We have posted the 8 ideas we are considering. We would really appreciate your thoughts and the thoughts from your community. Please share the ideas, and tell us what do you and your community think of those ideas before September 9.

Share your experiences with newcomers

We want to hear about what is working and what is not working for new contributors in your wiki. We also want to hear any reactions, questions, or opinions on our work. Please post on the team’s talk page, in any language!

Learn more about us

You can visit our team page to find out why our team was formed and how we are thinking about new editors, and our project page for detailed updates on the first project we'll work on.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Template messages/User talk namespace

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Template messages/User talk namespace. Legobot (talk) 04:34, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

Call for submissions for the Community Growth space at Wikimania 2019

Welcome to a special newsletter from the Growth team! This special newsletter is not about Wikimedia Foundation Growth team projects. Instead, it is a call for submissions for the Community Growth space at Wikimania 2019. We think that many people who receive this newsletter may have something valuable to contribute to this space at Wikimania. We haven't translated the newsletter, because Wikimania's language is English.

Please see below for the message from the organizers of the Community Growth space at Wikimania.

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Wikimania 2019 is organized into 19 “spaces”, which are all accepting proposals for sessions. This message comes from the team organizing the Community Growth space.

Since you are interested b Growth team projects, and potentially involved in welcoming newcomers initiatives on your wiki, we would like to invite you to submit a proposal to the Community Growth space because of the actions you’ve done around newcomers on wikis. The deadline for submission is June 1. See below for Community Growth submission topics and session formats. Topics and sessions have to be in English.

In the Community Growth space, we will come together for discussions, presentations, and workshops that address these questions:

• What is and is not working around attracting and retaining newcomers?
• How should Wikimedia activities evolve to help communities grow and flourish?
• How should our technology and culture evolve to help new populations to come online, participate and become community members?

Recommended topics: please see this link for the list for the list of recommended topics. If you do not plan to submit a proposal, you can also suggest additional topics here. If your topic does not fit into our space, remember that there are 18 other spaces that could welcome you sharing your knowledge and perspective.

Types of session. We prefer sessions that are participatory, interactive, promote conversations, and give a voice to parts of our movement that are heard less often. Please see this link for the list of recommended session formats.

Poster submissions. Posters are also a good way to introduce a topic, or show some results of an action. Please consider submitting one!

More information about the Community Growth space, topics, and submission formats is available on the proposal page.

Please submit your proposal. The reviews will happen at the beginning of June.

If you have questions about Wikimania in general, please ask them on the Wikimania wiki.

On behalf of the Community Growth leadership team, Trizek (WMF), 11:44, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

NPR Newsletter No.18

Hello Alsee,

WMF at work on NPP Improvements

Niharika Kohli, a product manager for the growth team, announced that work is underway in implementing improvements to New Page Patrol as part of the 2019 Community Wishlist and suggests all who are interested watch the project page on meta. Two requested improvements have already been completed. These are:

• Allow filtering by no citations in page curation
• Not having CSD and PRODs automatically marked as reviewed, reflecting current consensus among reviewers and current Twinkle functionality.

Reliable Sources for NPP

Rosguill has been compiling a list of reliable sources across countries and industries that can be used by new page patrollers to help judge whether an article topic is notable or not. At this point further discussion is needed about if and how this list should be used. Please consider joining the discussion about how this potentially valuable resource should be developed and used.

Backlog drive coming soon

Look for information on the an upcoming backlog drive in our next newsletter. If you'd like to help plan this drive, join in the discussion on the New Page Patrol talk page.

News

• Following a request for comment, the subject-specific notability guideline for pornographic actors and models (WP:PORNBIO) was removed; in its place, editors should consult WP:ENT and WP:GNG.

Discussions of interest

• A request for bot approval for a bot to patrol two kinds of redirects
• There has been a lot discussion about Notability of Academics
• What, if anything, would a SNG for Softball look like

Six Month Queue Data: Today – 7242 Low – 2393 High – 7250

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Delivered by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of DannyS712 (talk) at 19:17, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. Legobot (talk) 04:33, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-21

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

• The report for phase 1 of the talk pages consultation 2019 has been published. Communities are invited to start phase 2 of the consultation on their wikis.

Problems

• File descriptions for files from Commons were not shown properly on other Wikimedia wikis for a few days. For example the image descriptions and license information were missing. This has now been fixed. [1][2]
• Some diffs show an error message when you try to see them. The developers are working on fixing it. It could be because of some edit comments. [3][4]

Changes later this week

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

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 22 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• The content translation tool on Wikipedia can use machine translations. There is a system to stop translations where the editors do not fix machine translation mistakes. This warns or stops them if they seem to just copy what the machine translation gives them. If this system is too strict or not strict enough you can tell the language team. [5]
• The Wikidata wbeditentity API endpoint will remove all aliases if the request includes an empty alias. This is how it supposed to work. It has not been working this way because of a bug. This will start on 12 June. [6]

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

13:03, 20 May 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals). Legobot (talk) 04:29, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-22

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

• Big changes to the replica database will happen on 3 June. Some tools on Cloud Services will stop working if the maintainers do not update them to use the new schema. This probably affects tools that query for revisions or log entries made by a user. [7][8]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 28 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 29 May. It will be on all wikis from 30 May (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 29 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

15:33, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons. Legobot (talk) 04:31, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. Legobot (talk) 04:31, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-23

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

• You can now write all special letters in all African Wikipedia languages. This works in the desktop version. [9]
• There is now a field called depicts on Commons. This is a way to show what is in a picture with the help of Wikidata. It is still in development. [10]
• Some tools on Toolforge may break on or after 3 June because of database changes. Maintainers should update their tools to use the new schema. [11][12]

Problems

• You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for 30 minutes on 19 June at 05:00 (UTC). This is to fix a hardware problem. [13]

Changes later this week

• Some wikis have one tab for the visual editor and one tab for a wikitext editor. Others wikis just have one tab. If your wiki has two tabs, clicking a link to create a new page has always opened a wikitext editor. It will now open the editor you used the last time you edited. [14]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 4 May. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 5 May. It will be on all wikis from 6 May (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 5 May at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

15:24, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

Question

Just cos u're a wikipedia dinosaur: What's the best path to finding out if a user is an admin from the point of encounter- mostly signatures and edit histories? Thanks! Usedtobecool ^TALK 12:35, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

Usedtobecool there's a deeply entrenched idea that an admin is "just another editor" when they're not acting in a formal capacity, so I think there's a general aversion to anything that would make admin-status stand out on a passing encounter. When I do want to check, the easiest method I've found is to go to their contribution history, go to the bottom of the page, and click User rights. Note: that link doesn't seem to exist on some of the foreign wikis. A possibly quicker method, which I haven't been using... would be to just try loading the page WP:Requests_for_adminship/USERNAME. I expect that would get an accurate answer in almost all cases. Alsee (talk) 13:36, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

AfD for Coach Meddy

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Coach Meddy is currently a red link at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Log/2019 June 4. Do you plan to create this AfD page, or should I remove the red link from the log? – Lord Bolingbroke (talk) 23:15, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

Lord Bolingbroke thanx, but I think I have it all cleaned up now. Twinkle was glitching on me, perhaps because my AFD text was long. Alsee (talk) 23:49, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

Weird. If I understand what happened correctly, Twinkle added an AfD tag to the article and added the deletion discussion page (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Coach Meddy) to the log, but didn't actually create the discussion page? Thanks for tidying up at any rate. – Lord Bolingbroke (talk) 00:03, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

Lord Bolingbroke correct. Twinkle was spitting out a bunch of error messages about an incorrect token when I tried to save the AFD form. At first I thought it was because I took so long between clicking Twinkle-AFD and eventually saving. (I had to re-write about half of it from scratch, ugh.) But it errored again even when I wrote it in notepad and saved the AFD form with only minor time spent editing. I'm guessing it didn't like the length, or maybe the {{cot}}/{{cob}}? Or maybe just some random internet glitch. Shrug. Alsee (talk) 00:12, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I've never encountered anything like that before. Oh well, sometimes it's good to slow down and do things by hand anyway. – Lord Bolingbroke (talk) 00:30, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

Sorry to eavesdrop. Let the devs know, maybe? Usedtobecool ^TALK 07:19, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

Greetings Usedtobecool. Coincidentally I have lots of experience engaging the Foundation and stuff like bug reports. If any further problems turn up I'd be happy to take care of this. However at the moment it's a brief glitch, for one person, of unclear nature, and I didn't properly take note of the error messages that popped up. There's a good chance that the issue is isolated to Twinkle - an AFD nomination involves three edits and the first two edits of the process did go through correctly. It's possible Twinkle was unhappy with my abnormally-long AFD nomination or something. Any report I filed right now would be abysmally vague. Alsee (talk) 14:48, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, sure, of course, duh :D Removing from watchlist now; no more barging in lol :) See you around! Usedtobecool ^TALK 16:03, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. Legobot (talk) 04:30, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

June 2019

Hello. This is a message to let you know that one or more of your recent contributions, such as the edit you made to Prakash Neupane, did not appear constructive and has been reverted. Please take some time to familiarise yourself with our policies and guidelines. You can find information about these at our welcome page which also provides further information about contributing constructively to this encyclopedia. If you only meant to make test edits, please use the sandbox for that. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you may leave a message on my talk page. Being a Nepali editor I even don't know how many workers and contributors are there then how can you directly tell and remove the content? this is really something fishy here and you can't remove it at your own. Owlf 20:30, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

Owlf I was just in the middle of posting on your talk page, but we can discuss it here. First, Don't template the regulars... I'm not a new user and it should be obvious that my edit was not a test edit.

Regarding your revert at Prakash Neupane, and your question: How can any international editor can tell this is self-published and how can they know how many peoples are wroking on these online newspaper?

The kathmandutribune.com/about page helpfully tells us that the entire "staff" of this "newspaper" consists of two people, plus two foreign correspondents. The byline of the cited piece is By Kathmandu Tribune, obviously indicating it was WP:SELFPUBLISHED by the website owner with zero editorial oversight. Furthermore each piece on the site has a handy pageview counter. Pages on the site have negligible readership, and in many cases a significant percentage of that "readership" of their articles is actually just Wikipedia editors checking up on refs that have been added pointing to those pages. I have also seen sufficient evidence (which hopefully I don't need to dig up) that the site posts paid promotional content.

As a fellow editor with the WP:New pages patrol right, hopefully my reply offered some helpful tips on how to spot these sorts of impressive-looking but unreliable tiny "online newspaper" websites. Kathmandu Tribune does not qualify as a Reliable Source for anything substantial, and it definitely doesn't qualify as a Reliable Source for anything potentially promotional. The article for Kathmandu Tribune is one of a half-dozen currently open AFDs, involving multiple accounts making blatantly promotional COI edits.

I request that you self-revert your edit that restored this source to the article. Thanks. Alsee (talk) 21:16, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

RSN RfC

So first I want to say that I'm not disputing your !vote - you can come to whatever conclusion you think is appropriate and I totally respect that. I happen to think the source is RS but biased (the authors are for the most part established academics) myself, so I can certainly see how others would disagree. AFAICR I never added any content on the basis of these authors myself (though I did undo some blanket reverts by Icewhiz and FR which used this source but in those cases the issues went beyond just Chodakiewicz) My concern was mostly with regard to you "buying in" into the nonsense that Icewhiz is peddling (I'm concerned that others may as well too, precisely because they only "skim" the diffs - which don't show what he claims they show - and jump to conclusions). Volunteer Marek (talk) 21:09, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-24

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

• When you create a PDF from a page on the wiki this is now done by Proton. Before this we used Electron. It should look the same but work better. Both use Chromium. This is a different system from when you collect several articles into a book and make a PDF from them. [15][16]
• The Flagged Revisions extension now uses the standard OOUI icons. There will be additional minor fixes for positioning in the next deployment. [17]
• Bots and other scripts that do not set an identifiable User-Agent may find their requests strictly rate-limited until they identify themselves properly. [18]

Problems

• Please check if the Flagged Revisions configuration on your wiki is as you expect (or as it was a few weeks ago). If not, please report it. [19]

Changes later this week

• There is no new MediaWiki version this week.

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 12 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

17:06, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Tonsillectomy

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Tonsillectomy. Legobot (talk) 04:27, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

Growth team updates #8

Welcome to the eighth newsletter from the Growth team!

The Growth team's objective is to work on software changes that help retain new contributors in mid-size Wikimedia projects.

May was a busy month, and we apologize for a slightly late newsletter.

General news

• The Growth team will begin to work with the Arabic Wikipedia community as a new target wiki. This is in addition to Korean, Czech, and Vietnamese Wikipedias.
• Several members of the Growth team attended Wikimedia Hackathon. To see what we worked on and learned, read this update (in English).
• Wikimania 2019 is coming up in August. The conference will include a "Community Growth" space, for sessions about how our communities expand through software and programs.

Early results from newcomer homepage release

A newcomer homepage on Czech Wikipedia (displayed in English language)

• The newcomer homepage was deployed in Czech and Korean Wikipedias on May 6 for desktop users. It is deployed in an A/B test, so that half of newcomers have access to the homepage and half do not. They access it by clicking on their username in their personal tools along the top of the window.
• After about a month of usage, we see a few interesting trends. We think that the usage is going well so far, as we continue to work on the feature
  • About half of users who visit the homepage click on a link or button.
  • About half of users visit the homepage more than once, with about a fifth of users visiting on multiple days.
  • Users are interacting with all the different modules on the page -- there is no clear favorite.
  • Users have been asking questions to their mentors -- but not on the help desk.

Next steps for homepage

Mockup of mobile newcomer homepage

• Because we are seeing good reactions to the homepage from the first users, we are prioritizing work that helps more users find their homepage:
  • Mobile homepage: the team is currently building the mobile version of the homepage. We tested this design with five users, giving us confidence that the design is strong.
  • Features to aid discovery: only a minority of newcomers who have a homepage will find their homepage on their own. The team is designing features that help newcomers learn where to find their homepage. The most important feature will point to the homepage link using a GuidedTour.
• User tests showed that the most important thing to add to the homepage are clear task recommendations to help newcomers get started with editing right away. This is the module that we will be working on next.

Future of team in the next year

• The Growth team has been working since September 2018, and we're now planning for the work we'll be doing for the next fiscal year, which begins in July.
• Though we have not yet developed a feature that clearly increases growth in our target wikis, we believe that the features we have been developing have high potential to increase growth if we continue to work on them.
• Therefore, the team will continue to work on the features we have started, and we will develop related features that improve the overall newcomer experience. These features may include:
  • Improvements to how newcomers can build their user pages and develop their on-wiki identity. See initial notes here.
  • Improvements to how newcomers receive notifications on-wiki and through email, so that they quickly find out if other users are contacting them.
  • Processes that help newcomers get awards or recognition for good work.
  • Ways for newcomers to see the activity on the wiki and find others who share their interests.
• We will start discussions with communities to help us define these ideas before we work on them.

Growth team's newsletter prepared by the Growth team and posted by bot • Give feedback • Subscribe or unsubscribe.

09:02, 13 June 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals). Legobot (talk) 04:27, 16 June 2019 (UTC)

Tech News: 2019-25

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

Problems

• You will be able to read but not to edit Wikimedia Commons for 30 minutes on 19 June at 05:00 (UTC). This is to fix a hardware problem. [20]

Changes later this week

• MIDI files can soon be played without the Score extension. You can then add them with [[File:Filename.midi]]. Later override_midi and override_audio will stop working. Instead you will need to add the MIDI file below the music score. [21]
• A new video player will soon replace the old one. You will be able to enable it as a beta feature in your preferences. It will later be enabled for everyone if there are no big problems. [22]
• The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 18 June. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 19 June. It will be on all wikis from 20 June (calendar).

Meetings

• You can join the technical advice meeting on IRC. During the meeting, volunteer developers can ask for advice. The meeting will be on 19 June at 15:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

• Some gadgets and user scripts still use the old wgEnableAPI and wgEnableWriteAPI values. These values are always true. They will soon be removed. This might break the gadgets and scripts. You should fix your gadgets to not use these values. [23]

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

20:37, 17 June 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Noticeboard

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. Legobot (talk) 04:31, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Wikipedia:Village pump (technical). Legobot (talk) 04:31, 22 June 2019 (UTC)

Gravedancing

I consider your comments under the vote I previously cast to be gravedancing and request you tread lightly, please. My WP:TBAN was for argument style (bludgeoning, they say), not bad faith. I don't appreciate your casting aspersions. Thanks. --Anomalapropos (talk) 06:23, 23 June 2019 (UTC)