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Tech News: 2016-03

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 will be able to find or mark bugs and suggestions in Phabricator that are specific for your language or wiki. [1]
  • Notifications have been upgraded with more detailed and easier-to-access information. See the documentation. Cross-wiki notifications will be available soon on the two test wikis. [2]

Changes this week

  • The visual editor uses the TemplateData extension to make editing templates easier. You will now get a warning when you edit a TemplateData form and leave it without saving. [3]
  • MediaWiki will get a new authentication and authorization system called AuthManager. This is planned to happen in a month or two. Some bots will need to change how they log in. Two new and more stable authentication methods will be available now: Owner-only OAuth credentials and bot passwords. You can read more about the change. [4]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 19 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 20 January. It will be on all Wikipedias from 21 January (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 19 January at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.
  • You can join the next meeting with the Architecture committee. The topic this week is governance model. The meeting will be on 20 January at 22:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

17:56, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-04

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

Recent changes

  • You can now follow when pages are added or removed from a category on German Wikipedia. The plan is to add it to Wikimedia Commons and other Wikipedias this week. [5][6]
  • Administrators can hide individual entries of a page with RevisionDelete. There is now a button to choose "all", "none" or "inverse" in Special:Log. The article history will get the same buttons soon. Wikis that have done this locally with JavaScript will be able to remove that code. [7]

Changes this week

  • You will be able to see the references when you preview a section you are editing. This will happen even if there is no <references /> tag in that section. [8]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 26 January. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 27 January. It will be on all wikis from 28 January (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 26 January at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • There is now an extension called ArticlePlaceholder. It can automatically generate content on Wikipedia with data from Wikidata if there is no Wikipedia article. It will have a tag to remind the reader it is not an article and ask the reader to create one. The developer is now looking for smaller Wikipedias that want to try the extension. [9]
  • The OTRS system will be upgraded. The plan is to do this on 3 February at 08:00 (UTC). It will probably take 6 to 8 hours. OTRS will be down during the upgrade. [10]
  • Users will soon be automatically congratulated when they reach some edit count milestones. [11]

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

16:39, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Congratulations

100000 Edits
Congratulations on reaching 100000 edits. You have achieved a milestone that only 350 editors have been able to accomplish. The Wikipedia Community thanks you for your continuing efforts. Keep up the good work!

If you like you can add this userbox to your collection.

This user has been awarded with the 100000 Edits award.
Buster Seven Talk 16:14, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Vaikom Ramachandran

Hi DMacks

I received a message saying that my recent contribution was done. Please could you let me know what was the issue?

Many thanks in advance, Dev — Preceding unsigned comment added by 163.47.15.200 (talk) 16:49, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Max Li Hao

First, congratulations on your 100k! I'm at 144k, but unlike you, I did nearly all of it with Huggle, so it doesn't count. I probably should have an edit count of 3-7/42...

re your revert to Max Li Hao's page blanking of Tide rolls here Max Li Hao is quite likely a sock. There does not seem to be an SPI. It seems that as soon as one is blocked another Li Hao reappears. I suspect if one is too quick on the draw blocking these, another persona might be used. I left a message about this on Tide rolls' page which is probably what instigated the page blanking. Evidence? So, I used noping. These have been blocked, mostly for SP. Also, likely a COI.

Updated with account creation date Jim1138 (talk) 01:28, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Suggestions? Cheers Jim1138 (talk) 05:19, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

@Jim1138: Thanks for the congrats! Interesting situation, I'm not familiar with this sock-drawer. If @Tide rolls: recognizes it, he may have some suggestions specific to this case. Articles related to Southeast-Asian media are often sock-infested messes in my experience. Seems like an SPI would be a good place to centralize the accounts list and note the edit pattern. DMacks (talk) 14:18, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
@Jim1138:,I've blocked this account due to general disruptive practices and refusing to communicate. SPI may still be advisable if only to keep the information current. Also, Dmacks, if you think my action premature, please advise. By way of explanation, I've attempted communication with this individual for two months with no response. Thanks all, Tiderolls 15:42, 27 January 2016 (UTC)
@Tide rolls:, Dmacks: I was considering filing an SPI. I'm concerned that he will stop socking with usernames containing "Hao". Then it would be difficult to track. Need some software with learning capabilities to recognize such socks.
I seem to remember trying to contact a Mr. Li Hao sock a few times without any response. Given the numerous promotional edits, I suspect Mr. Li Hao may be affiliated, if not employed by Astro.
Shall I create an SPI for this? Add the above list of usernames? Any other usernames? Cheeers Jim1138 (talk) 02:39, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Yisroel Belsky

Hi DMacks. I see that you are an Administrator and have also reverted IP edits on Yisroel Belsky. They keep happening so can you please help with WP:Requests_for_page_protection#Yisroel_Belsky. Thank you. --Jersey92 (talk) 03:08, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Semi'd. Not sure I'll have much time to wiki over the next day or two, but will try to keep an eye on it moving forward. DMacks (talk) 17:16, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi DMacks. The sources the article is using is extremely biased. It implies that the man supported sexual abuse. I know the man by name (never spoke more than a few words to him, but I'm familiar with his career) and have followed the stories and he was only guilty of believing better of his so-called friends than they deserved. That is definitely an issue, but not what the article makes it sound like. Another item- the controversy about physical force against that husband who refused to give his wife a religious divorce leaves out a very important bit of information that the husband was abusive. I'm sure you've heard of brothers beating up abusive husbands - this is a similar story. The thought behind some of my edits- I didn't add the hyperbole, that was someone else- was to make the wikipedia article the balanced article it should be. --defender583 20:57, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Sounds like a great concern to raise on the article's talkpage. A centralized discussion, proposing additional text to add or other edits to make, with cites for additional sources (or concerns about existing sources) so others with interest in the article can participate and hopefully arrive at a consensus. One thing to keep in mind is that "personally known information" is not acceptable; for better or worse, only published reliable sources can be used (and only content verifiable by them can be included). DMacks (talk) 21:20, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

DMacks- the guy just died. There's stuff in the wikipedia article that is twisted from the sources to sound extremely bad. I think that Jersey92 is singlehandedly putting this twist in. I'm not saying this from stuff personally known to me, but from the same sources that are referenced now. The issue is are you going to let someone have defamatory stuff about them be put up again and again by one wikipedia user? It would be great if you could look at some of the IP edits that were removed and take out that slant. I don't think I have the manpower right now to keep undoing what Jersey92 is doing. --defender583 21:57, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Take it to the talkpage. DMacks (talk) 21:42, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-05

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

  • Sites with a wikimedia.org address were by mistake redirected to the Wikimedia Foundation wiki on 26 January. This included Meta and Wikimedia Commons. The mistake was fixed after an hour. [12]
  • Some users had problems logging in and out around 22 January. Bots also had problems and edit previews did not work properly. This was because of problems related to the new component SessionManager. It was undone on 23 January. [13][14]
  • Because of new problems with SessionManager the latest version of MediaWiki was removed from the Wikimedia wikis again on 31 January. The new version this week will be without SessionManager. [15]

Changes this week

  • The page history will get a help link. This will go to Help:Page history on Meta. Wikis can exchange it for a link to their local pages. [16]
  • Notifications will only show part of a page name if it is very long. You will also have another way to mark notifications as read. [17][18]
  • The Universal Language Selector input methods are now available with the visual editor. This means many who write in non-Latin scripts can now use the visual editor. [19]
  • The visual editor will now give you more tools to edit tables. You can move rows and columns in a table and copy parts of tables to make new ones. You can also copy and paste more than one cell at the same time. [20][21][22]
  • The visual editor has a new warning message when you leave a page you are editing without saving. Non-English wikis might need to translate it. [23][24]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 2 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 3 February. It will be on all wikis from 4 February (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • The rest.wikimedia.org domain will be shut down. This is planned to happen in March. You should use /enwiki/api/rest_v1/ at each individual project domain instead. [25]


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

21:02, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for patrolling my page. This is a long-term abuser who has done this a lot, and I was wondering if you were familiar with the master. GABHello! 23:50, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-06

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

Recent changes

  • Syntax highlighting support is now available for 53 more computer languages. [26]
  • When you get a notification that an edit has been reverted, the notification now quotes part of the edit summary. [27]
  • RESTBase is now using scrub_wikitext instead of scrubWikitext. [28]

Changes this week

  • Wikidata will have a new data type called "math". It will be used for formulas. [29][30]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 9 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 10 February. It will be on all wikis from 11 February (calendar).

Meetings

Future changes

  • Other sites will be able to tell when visitors come from links on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia sites. They used to be able to do this until we started using forced HTTPS in June 2015. This is planned to happen on 15 February. [31][32]
  • Wikidata will have a new data type called "external-id". It will be used for references to external resources. It will be enabled on February 16. Some properties will be changed to the new data type. [33][34][35]

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

18:58, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

February events and meetups in DC

Greetings from Wikimedia DC!

February is shaping up to be a record-breaking month for us, with nine scheduled edit-a-thons and several other events:

We hope to see you at one—or all—of these events!

Do you have an idea for a future event? Please write to us at info@wikimediadc.org!

Kirill Lokshin (talk) 16:40, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

You're receiving this message because you signed up for updates about DC meetups. To unsubscribe, please remove your name from the list.

Can't create this article!

Hi Can you please tell me why i can't create this(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haalum) article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sayak Bepari (talk • contribs) 19:00, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Because it fails WP:GNG and you are failing WP:EW and likely WP:COI. Even now, you're trying to hide your identity by refusing to sign your message to me. DMacks (talk) 03:16, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Lester Coleman

I wonder if you would be able to take a look at that article? The nonsense has started again, and you are one of the few people still editing who knows the article's history. NeilN apparently doesn't have time right now, and I can't handle this by myself. Best regards, Looie496 (talk) 19:41, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Indeed. I left a quick comment on the talkpage and will watch it, but given history I'm content to leave it in its pre-existing frozen state unless we have extremely reliable new references and consensus to change. DMacks (talk) 03:21, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Ryan Reynolds

Vandalism is happening often. Extend PC? --George Ho (talk) 17:15, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

@George Ho: does it seem like there are any viable edits that get approved, or would semiPROT be better? DMacks (talk) 17:43, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
Your decision. I'm fine with either way. George Ho (talk) 17:44, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
Semi'ed 1 year. No sense you and others wasting your time reverting so many anon bad edits. DMacks (talk) 22:09, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Reverting of edit by Michael Fjord

Hello, I wanted to explain the reason I removed information from BuzzFeed's page. I am affiliated with General Atlantic, and my goal on Wikipedia is to accurately list investment information concerning General Atlantic and General Atlantic’s portfolio companies. The investment information I removed was sourced from 3rd party news articles, but cannot be verified by General Atlantic or the companies who’s Wikipedia pages the information appears on as the details of those deals were not officially made public. I am able to verify the year of investment, so I kept that information available. If removal of the source is an issue, then I recommend keeping the source and date of investment, but removing other investment details (as my recent edits were intended to do). Thank you for your help! Michael Fjord (talk) 22:27, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

no warring

uh no, actually it isn't. No violation of 3RR, nor will there be. Pot-kettle-black about "edit-warring" when there's rude removing of valid accurate elabs for "I don't like" reasons and non-valid WP reasons. I'm only restoring correct information against WP bullies who think they own articles, when they don't. Please don't put nonsense on my page again. I don't break WP rules or standards like you do. I would never remove something, a good-faith valid accurate elaboration, from another editor, simply because I thought it may have been "too excessive". It's a Wiki, DMacks. No one contributor owns any article. Thanks. 71.183.133.173 (talk) 22:38, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Indeed, you do not own the articles. WP:EW is the behavioral standard you are failing to live up to, by making the same edit three times and refusing to accept that anyone can possibly have any valid objection to what you wish an article to say. Why are you writing about celestial bodies in thermodynamics articles anyway? You are on notice that you know about edit-warring, and the likely block that results when you continue doing it rather than listening to others first. DMacks (talk) 22:42, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
WP policy and recommendation is to MODIFY rather than completely remove. You have not done that. If you have some issue about "celestial" bodies, you could have still kept the point about "disorganize" as (this has been a complaint from many) not every reader necessarily understands what the word "entropy" means or refers to or signifies. What's wrong with clarifying what that word means for the average reader who is not always so technically versed?? You'll notice that in the article there, the word "entropy" is not really explained even a little bit. (And PLEASE save the old silly excuse or line of "well the reader can click the wiki link"...as that is not always done, and the body of the article should have at least some clarification of unfamiliar uncommon not-always-used and technical terms etc.) Again, good faith accurate additions, mods, and elabs, should not be so hastily completely removed, but at most maybe modified or tweaked. Thanks. 71.183.133.173 (talk) 22:49, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
WP policy is that it is uploader's WP:BURDEN to provide cites for any uploaded material and that it's not others' responsibility to fix the uploader's mistakes rather than deleting outright what is nonsense. I have made no excuses...you seem fond of putting incorrect words in my mouth. WP:AGF is a policy that can get you blocked just as sure as edit-warring and other disruption. DMacks (talk) 21:45, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Harassment Notification and Warning

I don't know what you have against me and I don't know what your problem is or what privilege you assume you have but I do not accept harassment at any level. You seem to be following every edit I make on every page for the sheer enjoyment of bullying and harassment. You have made you intentions clear as you have continued to revert every single revision I have made in the past few days as you choose to input your own opinion into the edits I make. If you continue with following my every move and continue with your harassment, then I will be left with no choice contact the wikipedia staff to have you blocked and banned from this site. Please, resolve any issues you have with me and move on. There are more important people to bully and harass elsewhere on other sites that would probably be more fun to you. Don't keep on disrupting progress on this site, an educational encyclopedia that people come to for information. — Preceding unsigned comment added by LivingGuildpact (talk • contribs) 04:35, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Our site's Verifiability policy is one of the core policies that helps wikipedia progress in its educational mission. Adding content that is not in keeping with that, and associated/supporting guidelines such as reliable sourcing, such as you are doing, is not helpful. Please make sure you are only adding content when accompanied by a bibliographic citation from a reliable source to support it. I'll start...Miracle Whip's page lists water as its first ingredient, therefore the second ingredient (some sort of oil) cannot be more than 50% of the contents. But mayonnaise according to the US-FDA ref listed on its page requires that the oil content be ≥65%. So now you need to find a ref that says either Kraft is incorrect about what its own product contains or that the FDA misprinted or changed their mind of their own legal documents. DMacks (talk) 08:33, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-07

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

  • You can now edit pages on the mobile site version without JavaScript. [36]
  • You can now use the Math extension to write chemistry formulas. [37]

Problems

  • A few editors might have been logged in as someone else because of a bug. For security reasons everyone was logged out on 9 February. If you have seen this bug, you can report it. [38][39]

Changes this week

  • There is a beta feature that adds links to the subject on other Wikimedia projects. The plan was to have it leave beta testing and be enabled for everyone in January. It will happen on 16 February instead. Wikis that don't want this can decide to have it disabled. [40][41]
  • Cross-wiki notifications will be available as a beta feature on Wikidata, MediaWiki, Commons, and all Hebrew and French wikis on 19 February. [42]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 16 February. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 17 February. It will be on all wikis from 18 February (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 16 February at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • The search function on Wikimedia wikis will get a completion suggester that tries to find the right pages as the user is typing. It will also recognize some typos. This will probably happen in March. It is currently in beta. [43]

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

16:16, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Nomination of Climate Action Plan for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Climate Action Plan is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Climate Action Plan until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. J♯m (talk | contribs) 16:10, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Since you contributed to the discussion over at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Avoiding dangerous climate change, I wanted to ping you and let you know that your input would be valued. I am posting this notice on the talk page for every editor who has contributed to that discussion and the discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Climate action, regardless of their vote or apparent viewpoint. J♯m (talk | contribs) 17:42, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Did not understand

Hello.Thanks for message but I did not understand why you removed my edit. I found dead link on page and changed it to similar live link. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Coma123 (talk • contribs) 16:19, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes, and then User:KH-1 removed it, saying "not RS"...that is, he felt the link you added did not meet our reliable-source guidelines. So first, Wikipedia doesn't allow you to simply keep re-adding once there's a disagreement...that's an edit war, which doesn't benefit readers or editors. But second, I also think that the site you added does not meet the RS guidelines. It looks like just a blog similar self-published website, which is especially bad for any sort of medical-related content. That's how the previous (deadlink, as you noted) appeared to be also. KH-1 and I both supported simply removing altogether rather than reverting to include the deadlink. There's already another link to a high quality source there, so adding an additional (and lower-quality) one doesn't help. DMacks (talk) 16:29, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-08

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

Problems

  • There was no new MediaWiki version last week. Changes that were planned to happen last week will happen this week instead. This is because of a bug that made saving pages take longer time. [46][47]

Changes this week

  • After February 23, you can use Wikidata for inter-language links on Wikiversity. [48]

Meetings

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

18:22, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

While I have your ear...

...ind swinging by Talk:Vladimir Putin? Bit of a fight going on there, people deleting others' posts, etcetera.. Could use a referee. HalfShadow 08:11, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, that's more of a mess than I have time to sort through right now:( DMacks (talk) 08:13, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Nef synthesis, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page John Ulric Nef. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 15:08, 26 February 2016 (UTC)

Revision on page Flipkart

Please advise why the following were removed:

[added content text itself removed; instead, here is a link to the edit: [49]]

Benitism (talk) 09:19, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

That content you added appears to be substantially cut-and-pasted from the cited references. That makes the content a copyright violation, which is completely forbidden on wikipedia. I left more commentary and links about this problem on your talkpage. DMacks (talk) 09:22, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Revision Snapdeal

lease advise why the following were removed:

[added content text itself removed; instead, here is a link to the edit: [50]]

Benitism (talk) 09:21, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Also a copyright violation ([51] for example). DMacks (talk) 09:28, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-09

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

Recent changes

  • Thanks to the Graph extension and Pageview API, we now have {{Graph:PageViews}} templates that can show pageviews for any wiki page for any of the wikis. See the examples.
  • The Capiunto extension is installed on test wiki. Capiunto provides flexible infobox functionality for Scribunto and generates HTML for infobox features such as headers and rows. It is designed for clean and modern infoboxes that are driven by data from Wikidata, easily usable across different language versions, and easily extensible.
  • The visual editor now follows the TemplateData format setting announced in November. When you edit or add a use of a template, the wikitext will be laid out in one of the two ways. [52][53]
  • The order of parameters and format defined in a template's TemplateData will be now respected. [54][55]

Changes this week

  • On wikis where the visual editor is available in single edit tab mode, red links may open the visual editor instead of the wikitext editor, depending on user preferences. [56]
  • Anonymous editor warning is now displayed as a warningbox for consistency in both the visual editor and the wikitext editor. [57]
  • Parsoid has been updated to fit some HTML 5 specifications. [58]

Meetings

  • Resigning executive director Lila Tretikov is taking questions at Knowledge Engine FAQ regarding the much talked about project. [59]
  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 1 March at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

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

20:12, 29 February 2016 (UTC)

This Month in Education: [March 2016]


We apologize for an earlier distribution that mistakenly took on the older content. We hope you enjoy the newest issue of the newsletter we are sharing now.--Sailesh Patnaik (Distribution leader) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 18:44, 2 March 2016 (UTC)

March events and meetups in DC

Greetings from Wikimedia DC!

Looking for something to do in DC in March? We have a series of great events planned for the month:

Can't make it to an event? Most of our edit-a-thons allow virtual participation; see the guide for more details.

Do you have an idea for a future event? Please write to us at info@wikimediadc.org!

Kirill Lokshin (talk) 16:30, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

You're receiving this message because you signed up for updates about DC meetups. To unsubscribe, please remove your name from the list.

Tech News: 2016-10

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

Recent changes

  • Files on Wikimedia Commons can now be 2 GB big. The old limit was 1 GB. [60]
  • Welcome notifications now have a different symbol. English Wikipedia already had this one. [61]
  • The Wikimedia memory cache servers in the Eqiad cluster have now been upgraded to Debian 8 (Jessie). Some users might have had to log in again because of this. [62]
  • It is now easier to categorize images uploaded to Wikimedia Commons in the Commons Android app. [63]
  • Bare attributes in tags now parse according to the HTML5 specifications. <pages from= to= section=1> will parse as <pages from="to=" section="1"> instead of <pages from="" to="" section="1"> as it used to. Please use <pages from="" to="" section=1> or <pages section=1> instead. This is mostly likely to affect pages on Wikisource projects. [64]

Problems

  • Phabricator has been a bit unstable lately. This should be fixed now. [65]
  • The PageView API shows wrong data between 23 February and 29 February for pages with special characters in their title. [66]
  • The parsing change mentioned above caused a large number of pages to break, especially on Wikisource. [67]
  • You may see falsely formatted edit links on both mobile and desktop devices. Mobile devices can also show incorrect formatted table of contents. This should be fixed soon. [68]
  • Templates using TemplateData that were edited with the visual editor might have some problems in wikitext mode. This can be fixed by editing and saving the page by using the visual editor without making any changes. [69]

Changes this week

  • Cross-wiki notifications will be enabled as a beta feature on all wikis on 10 March. You will be able to get notifications when something happens on another Wikimedia wiki. [70]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 8 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 9 March. It will be on all wikis from 10 March (calendar).
  • Wikivoyages will get the Kartographer extension. Kartographer will allow <mapframe> and <maplink> tags in an article to insert an interactive map and overlay it with different markers. You can add ideas and suggestions to the Maps talk page. If you find any bugs, you can report them in Phabricator. [71]

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 8 March at 20:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • The buttons in interfaces will be simplified. Instead of white, red, green and blue buttons, in future there will only be white, red and blue ones. [72]
  • The Wikimedia technical operations team plans to do some server work on 22 March. This could cause some problems, for example make it possible to read but not edit the Wikimedia wikis for a short period of time. The date for this might change. [73]

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

20:24, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

Escape Plan

Hi DMacks, we restored info on a broken link and added to where it was referenced. The page I edited is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_safety. The old url for escape plan was https://www.usfa.fema.gov/citizens/home_fire_prev/escape/. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns. I can be reached on ed.burton79@gmail.com. Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 170.89.9.1 (talk) 17:24, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-11

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

  • The mobile web interface no longer suggests HiDPI thumbnails. This is to take up less bandwidth on slow or expensive connections. [74]
  • The search engine on wikipedia.org has been updated. [75]

Changes this week

  • Wikimedia has a new backup data center in Dallas. Because of planned work on this, you will be able to read but not edit the wikis for a short period of time on both 22 March and 24 March. This could be postponed to April 18. You might lose edits if you try to save during this time. Because of a test, there will also be a couple of minutes where you can't edit the wikis on 15 March starting 07:00 UTC. You can read more about the server work. There will be more notifications and updates about this.
  • Administrators and other users with advanced permissions will need to have an 8-byte long passwords. This change takes place on 15 March. Users with too short passwords will be asked to change password the next time they log in. This was decided in a discussion on Meta and is because they can use tools that can hurt the wikis. [76]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 15 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 16 March. It will be on all wikis from 17 March (calendar).
  • The buttons in interfaces will be simplified. Instead of white, red, green and blue buttons, in future there will only be white, red and blue ones. [77]

Meetings

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18:37, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

How is that disruptive editing?

I only added the words "is the motion of" to make it more sensible. The language seemed inadequate.How is that disruptive? — Preceding unsigned comment added by K Sikdar (talk • contribs) 09:55, 19 March 2016 (UTC)

Regarding what you say you did...you changed someone else's talkpage comment in a way that changes the exact meaning of what was written. That's forbidden by our standard talkpage guidelines...you don't know what shade of meaning or level of explanation was intended. But worse, you completely removed my comment. That's even worse than doing just against-guideline but perhaps minor changes to someone else's wording. Here's a link to the changes you made: [78]. DMacks (talk) 20:25, 20 March 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-12

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

Problems

  • Wikimedia has a new backup data center in Dallas. The Wikimedia Technology department planned to test it this week. This will take place the week of April 18 instead. You can read more about the server work. There will be more notifications and updates about this.
  • In Firefox, the visual editor would sometimes just jump down to the bottom of the page when you double-clicked on a table cell. This has now been fixed. [79]

Changes this week

  • It will now be easier to list IP addresses that don't have to solve CAPTCHAs. [80]
  • You will now be able to mark Echo notifications as unread. [81]
  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 21 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 22 March. It will be on all wikis from 23 March (calendar).

Meetings

  • You can join the next meeting with the VisualEditor team. During the meeting, you can tell developers which bugs you think are the most important. The meeting will be on 22 March at 19:00 (UTC). See how to join.

Future changes

  • URLs in the recent changes IRC feed will no longer be rewritten to unencrypted HTTP. This could be a breaking change for bots dependent on the IRC feed. This will happen on May 2. [82]

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

16:04, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Cynthia Larive's AFD

I've closed the AFD as a keep. I did read the article and don't think it shouldv'e been kept, but consensus is consensus and that's what counts in the end. VegasCasinoKid (talk) 22:24, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the followup. DMacks (talk) 22:27, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-13

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

Recent changes

Problems

  • Adding references with Citoid was broken for approximately 6 hours on 24 March. This was fixed. [85]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from 29 March. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from 30 March. It will be on all wikis from 31 March (calendar).
  • You will be able to remove the header and footer style from User language (babel) boxes. This will make it easier to use them with other userboxes. [86]

Meetings

Future changes

  • Commons will soon have improved access to Wikidata's data. It will then be possible to access data about any concept on any page on Commons. Assistance with testing this on the beta cluster is appreciated. [87]
  • Wikibits.js will not be loaded by default anymore starting April 2016. Gadget and script authors should have already updated their code since the previous announcements, but there is another migration path available if needed. See wikitech-l for details.

Corrections

  • Last week Tech News said the new MediaWiki version would come to wikis from 21 March to 23 March. The right dates were 22 March to 24 March.

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19:43, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

That was quick

Fair enough. [88]. Perhaps the word will become common use after his Tarzan-movie, then I´ll be able to source it to CNN, BBC, WaPo and the like. Sorry for the bother! Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:16, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

No bother at all. UrbanDictionary and similar sites are pretty notable as a nonreliable source, and things related to living persons need really good sources (WP:BLP policy). But sure, if some day this gets picked up in mainstream media or something like that, it's reasonable to include it (as actual prose with cite). DMacks (talk) 08:19, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Tech News: 2016-14

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

  • You can filter Special:Log in more detail. [89]
  • Wikimedia wikis have a new way of counting visitors. [90]

Changes this week

  • The new version of MediaWiki will be on test wikis and MediaWiki.org from April 5. It will be on non-Wikipedia wikis and some Wikipedias from April 6. It will be on all wikis from April 7 (calendar).

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22:13, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

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